Battle On Mercury (1953) - Erik Van Lhin

$2.
00 �lte Author
EmK VA� Ltm/s literary ability is
Rattle 011 );tereur!f many-sided. He bas written ad <:opy,
typed manuscripts, read proof, helped
By ERIK VAN LHIN manage a literary agency and, of course,
written books. Though he lists swimming
Jacket illustration by Kenneth Fagg
as a favorite pastime, this young author
HE:-J sun storms periodically S\V<'pt sticks close to writin g and claims that his
W .\Iercury with waves of solar fire, biggest thrill carne when he learned of
radiation and cle<.:tri<.:il y, it was usn a I for the sale of his first story. A native of 1'\ew
the authorities to order evac.:uation of the York City, where he attended :New York
small mining communities on the side of University, Mr. Van Lhin did extensive
the planet that faced the Sun. But as research concerning the Sun's nearest
time for the most violent solar eruptiou neighbor before writing BATTLE o:-.r \h:n
known to earthlings approached, no res Cl.'lW. Though he considers the facts he
cue rocket ship appeared outside the learned about the planet interesting, the
Sigma dome that housed Dick Rogers most fascinating aspect of science fiction
and his familv. writing, says the author, is "the sympathy
Around m{c of the universe's most vou feel for the aliens you create. Per
awcsome events- sun spots- Erik van haps this means that we are learning to
Lhin has written a talc of rugged courage appreciate life for what it is and not for
and heroism in the face of impending where it originates, or how it looks."
doom. Young Dick 1\ogers wasn't too
well liked by the tov.mspeople. He in
sisted on .keeping an erratic "wispy"- the
Z:lte 8ditors
strange form of ;vrercury life that took CECILE MATSCHAT, editor of the
the shape of an electrically charged ball \Vinston Science Fiction Series, is reco g
of flame-as a friend. And thmwh Dick's nized as one of this country's most skil
favorite "wispy," Johnny Qt .:'icksilver, ful writers and editors. She has sixteen
c? uld usually he trusted, the mining en books to her credit, including the highly
gmeers were never sure whether it was praised Suwannee Rir.;er in the "Rivers
he who periodically blew out fuses and of America" Series. Nationally known as
upset delicate elcch·ical circuits. a· lecturer, an artist of great ability,
Against this background, the storv of Cecile :\1atschat is also an expert his
Dick Rogers' odyssey through �v[crct;ry's torian. With this varied background, she
bleak and blazing landscape takes on is perfectly suited to select top science
desperate urgency. How he, an ancient fiction authors and books to make this
robot and the �1ercurv veteran "Hotside a balanced and well-rounded series.
CAHL CARMER, consulting editor, holds
Charlie" withstand �1crcury's 800 degree
temperatures, escape rivers of molten
/
an outstanding )osition in the literary
l :�d, and :fight the planet's horrifying world. Author o Stars Fell on Alabama,
he now edits the popular "Rivers of
s1ltcone hcasts, is in the best science fic
America" Series. Other of his books are
tion tradition.
Genesee Fever, For the Rights of Man,
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ROCKET TO LUNA-by RICHAHll :\IAHSTE:-<. A young stowaway on

the first moon-bound nK·kct provt·s his worth.
BATTLE ON MERCURY-by EHIK VA :-< LHJ:-<. Unique forms of electrical life come to the
aid of Mercury's coloni;wrs in their fight against destruction from the Sun.
MYSTERY OF THE THIRD MINE-by Ho'lt:IIT W. Lowr-mEs. Space frontiersmen leave

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EARTHBOUND-b!l Mu:roN LF.sSER. A spunky teen-ager who washes out of space school
rockets to the asteroids on a rescue mission authorities said "couldn't snc<:eell."
FIVE AGAINST VENUS-by PmuP LATHA).t. llow a fmnily of e.uthlings battles for its
life when a Moon-bound rocket crashes in the misty wilds of Venus is a talc of powerful
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Mars expedition solv<.'li n sinister aspect of life on the ctcsolatc "red planet."
FIND THE FEATHERED SERPENT-h!f En:-< Ilu:-:n:n. Through centurit>s-back to the

glittering !llarnn civilization of ancient �texico-go a pair of l'Xplorcrs who discover
Vi�-ings in the South!
SON OF THE STARS-by RAYMO�!> Jo:-:Es. \\'hen a ,-oung visitor fron1 space befriends his
earthly counterpart, worried authorities turn friemlship into trPac:hery and bring Earth
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THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

Philadelphia and Toronto
Hattie on .Mcrcuru
..
�.-;.....
A Science Fidion Novel
YattleoJt
v«ercuru
By ERIK VAN LHIN
Jacket Design by Kenneth Fagg
Endpaper Design by Alex Schomburg
Cecile Matschat, Eclitor

Carl Carmer, Consulting Eclitor
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

Philadelphia • Toronto
Copyright, 1958
BY ERIK VAN l..mN
Copyright in Great Britain
and in the British Dominions
and Possessions
Copyright in the Republic of
the Philippines
FIRST EDITION
Made in the United States of America
L. C. Card #52-12900
To Larry
Life in a Dome
ERCURY unpleasant little world. Long after
M
IS AN
men have learned to live on Mars and Venus

they will find it dangerous and nearly impossible
on Mercury.
The planet is even smaller than Mars, and it circles
around the sun at a distance of only 36,000,000 miles,
just a little more than one-third as far out as Earth.
That means that it receives about seven times as
much light and heat as we do on Earth from the
sun's radiation.
There is no air on Mercury to screen out even
vii
viii Bottle on Mercury
part of this blazing fury. The light and heat we

normally feel are only part of the energy it receives.
There are ultraviolet rays so intense they would
burn out unshielded eyes in minutes, and there are
even X-rays and other savage radiation hitting the
unprotected surface.
To make matters worse, Mercury always turns
the same side toward the sun, just as the Moon
does to the Earth. There is no night on this burn
ing half of the planet and no chance to cool off.
The temperature there rises to nearly eight hun
dred degrees Fahrenheit-hot enough to melt lead
and tin!
On the cold side there is no day, and no light
or heat are received. Here the temperature is so
low that even the gasses of the air would be frozen
solid. 1-'lercury must have had some air once, but
it has all drifted to this cold side and frozen, until
none is left on the rest of the planet.
But between the two sides there is a very narrow
strip where men might first build domes to house
a few people. Mercury wobbles a little as it circles
the sun each eighty-eight days. Because of this,
the twilight belt, as the zone between hot and cold
sides is called, tilts gradually toward the sun and
then away. It is as if the sun just rose over the
horizon and then sank again, giving a day and night
cycle equal to one circling of the planet around the
L;le in a Dome ix
sun. Here the temperature would be neither too hot

nor too cold for life, though men could never live
outside their little domes or spacesuits. It would still
be a forbidding, uncomfortable place.
No life as we know it could exist on Mercury.
The extremes of temperature and the lack of air
would make this impossible. But we cannot say that
there is no life there. Probably none will be found.
But life might take different forms. The very ex
treme of solar radiation would make it possible for
life which could not exist on Earth, since it would
provide a terrific amount of energy-and with suffi
cient energy less efficient forms of life could exist.
Creatures made of silicones might develop near
the twilight belt. The silicones are compounds of
silicon, which are quite similar in many ways to the
compounds of carbon that form the basis for our
life. But unlike the carbon compounds, they can
stand a temperature range of hundreds of degrees
with very little change-which is why airplanes use
silicone oils now in very hot or very cold climates.
On Earth such life would be too sluggish and in
efficient to compete with us, but Mercury could
provide enough energy to make such creatures quite
active.
Life might even find existence in forms which
were not normal matter at all. We have accounts
on Earth of fireballs-lightning, or electricity, which
X BoHfe on Mercury
has taken spherical form and somehow doesn't

break down easily. On Mercury, with its high energy
and almost certain discharges of electricity from
solar radiation, such things might be more common.
We know very little about what life is, and we can
not say such things might not form a strange type
of life. It could never do the things we can do
but then neither can we do what it would probably
find easy. And given life, there is always the chance
of intelligence evolving.
These creatures may be only possibilities. We
don't know that they exist and can't know until we
reach Mercury. But we have no way of knowing
that some such forms of life do not inhabit Mer
cury, and all we can say is that they might.
Men, of course, can learn to live anywhere in
time-because they carry their normal living con
ditions with them. The domes would hold back the
heat and keep air around them. And ways could be
found for men to move out into the hottest of the
sunward side, if there was any reason for them to
go there. The shipping and main centers would
have to be at the twilight belt, but mining domes
might stretch over the whole hot side of the planet.
Metals on Mercury would probably be different
from those on Earth, since many would occur free
instead of in ores. Lead and tin could be piped,
since they would be liquid; but all kinds of other
l.ile in a Dome xi
valuable metals must be available to encourage

developing the planet. With the domes and suits
heavily insulated, men would work the mines,
though they might need some kind of robot ma
chines for the heaviest work.
It would be a strange life in these little domes,
and a lonely one. Each little colony would be cut off
from the others most of the time, since radio waves
would normally reach only to the horizon; they
would have no air to carry them all around the
planet. And even when radio was possible, the
terrific static from the near-by sun would make
reception very difficult.
Consequently, it would be a dangerous life. If
anything went wrong and men were cut off from
their supplies, they would be helplessly stranded in
a world that seems designed to make human life
almost impossible.
But men have faced danger before, and nothing
has ever kept the human race back forever. Men
will come to Mercury in the future, to build their
domes, work their mines, and even to have families.
This is an attempt to show what might happen to
one of those little mining domes during an emer
gency.
It is far in the future, of course-but probably not
as far as we might think.
E. v. L.
eontents
CHAPTER PACE
Life in a Dome . . . . vii
1. Blame Johnny Quicksilver 1
2. New Life for Pete . . . 15
3. Abandoned! . . . . . 29
4. No Answer from Twilight . 42
5. Only Two Weeks. . 56
6. Crack-Up . . . . 69
7. A Map from Johnny. 81
8. Into the Hotlands 94
9. Stranded . . . 107
10. The Wispies 120
11. River of Lead . 133
12. The Impossible Trek 146
13. Hope and Despair 159
14. The Silicone Beasts 173
15. Battle of Monsters 186
16. Demon Power . . 198
xiii
/!attic un )'tcreuru
eltapter I Blame Johnny Quicksilver
lHERE WAS NO Am in the tunnel, and the tempera

ture was high, even for Mercury-a little over
eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. But the big
mining robot had been built for work there, and it
knew its business. Its four feet were planted :firmly
near the end of the little tunnel, and its big manlike
body and featureless head were bent forward
intently.
In its metal arms the heavy hose moved care
fully, squirting out liquid lead mixed with sharp
1
2 BaHia on Mercvry
crystals of quartz. On the surface above there was

a whole lake of the stuff, which was made even
hotter in a sun-mirror oven and pumped down
under pressure. It cut through the softer material
at the end of the tunnel, gradually freeing a big
block of solid beryllium-the light, hard metal which
could be found in a pure state only here.
Everything seemed to be going as it should. But
there was a frown on Dick Rogers' face as he sat
watching the robot through the darkened glass of
his spacesuit helmet.
"Cut over to the left a little more," he said into
the little radio in the suit.
The robot moved the hose a trifle...More left," its
answer came expressionlessly through the phones.
At seventeen, Dick was already fully grown-tall
and thin, like all the men who grew up on a planet
of low gravity, but with muscles already well hard
ened, as shown by the ease with which he wore
the heavy metal and insulation of the suit. On
Earth it would have weighed over four hundred
pounds, but here Dick and the suit together came
to no more than one hundred and sixty. It was still
no easy job to move around in it for hours.
His face was narrow and sensitive, but his mouth
was firm and there was determination in his slate
blue eyes, which stared out of a face tanned to
Blome Johnny Quicksilver 3
nearly as dark a color as his black hair. There were

no pale faces under the hot sun of Mercury.
Now he nodded as the robot went on with its
work. Maybe things were going to work out all
right, after all. But he didn't believe it. He felt
trouble coming. It had been one of those days
when everything went wrong, and he couldn't be
lieve his bad luck had run out yet.
Johnny Quicksilver had started it. Johnny was
one of the native balls of pure electricity that some
how were alive. The spooks, or wispies-from
will-o'-the-wisp-as they were called, had caused
nothing but trouble for the miners, until they were
finally chased from the domes. But Dick had found
Johnny almost dying out in the hotlands and had
revived him with electricity from a storage battery.
Since then, Johnny had been something of a pet,
and fairly well behaved.
This morning, though, Johnny had insisted on fol
lowing Dick from the big dome across the mile of
hotlands to the mine, acting very strangely. He'd
finally disappeared, but by then Dick had been late,
and had been thoroughly bawled out for it. As
punishment, he'd been taken out of the pumping
department, ordered into a suit, and sent down to
supervise this big mining robot. It was the dirtiest
work in the mine, but he hadn't dared to complain.
BaHie on Mercury
Lately, everyone had seemed worried and nervous,

and it was no time to kick about the job.
Besides, he was still on probation. When his
father, who was head engineer of the mine, had
let him begin working on his seventeenth birthday,
the miners had claimed nobody who fooled around
with spooks could be responsible. As a result, he
was on trial for six months-and he'd been on the
job only three weeks.
If he failed, he'd have to go back to tending
the hydroponic tanks with the women and old
men. Of course, someone had to ta:ke care of the
plants that supplied most of their food and kept
the air fresh and breathable-but Dick wanted to
be an engineer, not a farmer! He'd spent most of
his life fooling with machinery, and could think of
no better way to spend the rest of it.
Suddenly the robot stopped. It shook its head
from side to side, lumbered backward on its four
feet, and dropped the hose. Then it stood frozen,
making no further move.
Dick leaped for the hose before it could twist
back at him. Under full pressure it was more than
he could hold, but he managed to find the shut-off
and stop the stream of lead. Then he swnng to the
robot. "What's the trouble?"
«No trouble," the message came back over his
radio. Sometimes the automatic testers in the big
Blame Johnny Quicksilver 5
machines could locate the fault, but this had to be

one of the cases where they didn't work, of course.
Dick snapped open the silicone plastic cover on
the robofs chest and began testing it quickly. There
was power enough in its batteries. He began snap
ping the little levers in the proper testing sequence,
but everything seemed to be in order. Still, the robot
refused to work.
Dick gave up after a final inspection. There was
nothing to do now but report it and wait-and that
meant he wouldn't get credit for loosening the big
chunk of beryllium before quitting time. It might
even mean having to stay late while he helped the
repair crew with the robot.
Dick tuned the dial on the front of his suit to
the general call band. "Dick Rogers, tunnel 3-MO,"
he reported. "Robot out of order. No sign of trouble,
but it won't work."
"Okay, Dick," his father's voice answered in the
phones. ·Tm coming down in a few minutes, any
how. Wait around. How's the cutting?"
"Almost done, Dad," Dick reported. "Another
hour should finish it."
The older man's voice sounded worried-much
more worried than it should have been because of
a routine delay such as this. But his words were
normal enough. "Okay. Maybe we can get it going.
I'll be there in twenty minutes."
6 Battle on Mercury
There was nothing more for Dick to do. He

dropped back on his stool and began to eat his
lunch. Eating was a complicated business. Food
was stored inside the suit, but he had to work for
it. He wriggled his arms carefully out of the bulging
sleeves and reached into the supply compartment
built over his chest. He had just enough room where
the helmet met the neck of the suit for him to
reach his mouth. It took practice, but he managed.
Then he reached for the heavily insulated plastic
box of his personal belongings, where he kept an
engineering text he was studying. The book was
actually a device that projected words from a film
onto a tiny screen, and would work in the heat of
the tunnel. Dick's fingers threw up the cover of the
box-and stopped. Lying inside the box was a tiny,
blue-white ball of fire!
It snapped out before he could jerk his hand back,
and leaped into the air, five feet away. Suddenly it
swelled out into a globe about two feet in diameter,
like a ball of lightning, speckled with little swirling
patterns. Johnny Quicksilver hung in the air, danc
ing up and down busily.
Somehow he must have pulled himself into the
tiny globe form in which he seemed to sleep and
had slipped into the box when Dick had thought
he was already gone. Now he was inside the mine,
the one place where he had no business to be.
Johnny was pure electricity, somehow alive and

held together in a way nobody could understand.
The wispies had been all over the hotlands when
men first reached Mercury. They absorbed energy
from the blazing fury of the sun and moved about
by tiny discharges of electricity. Men paid no at
tention to them at first, but they began to creep
into the machines and suck electricity from bat
teries and wires, frequently short-circuiting a ma
chine and ruining it.
Normally, nothing could hurt them except coming
in contact with grounded metal, which sometimes
would completely drain away their energy. But
the miners had taken to wearing ion blasters. These
discharged a stream of atoms which had been
stripped of their electrons and given a positive
charge-and were pure poison to the spooks. The
creatures had been chased out of the domes, and
things had settled down to a quiet war, each side
seeming to hate the other, until Dick had tried to
tame Johnny.
"Johnny," Dick yelled at him. "Johnny, do you
want to be killed? Get back in that box before
someone sees you. And don't start any funny busi
ness here, or fll have to shoot you myself. Get back,
now!"
Dick wasn't sure whether the creature got his
words over the radio or read his mind telepathically.
8 Baffle on Mercury
But he knew it could understand some of what he

said.
Johnny paid no attention. He began darting to
ward the end of the tunnel, then hack to Dick,
trying to tease him to follow. It was the same trick
he'd tried that morning, but this was no time for
playing games. Dick's father would be along soon
and that would be the end of Johnny!
Johnny suddenly seemed to tire of the game, just
as Dick moved toward him with the box. He cut
his size in half and darted up the tunnel, to dis
appear. Dick started after him and then slumped
back. He couldn't catch the wispy now; all he
could hope was that Johnny was tame enough to
let the machinery alone.
Then he remembered his father was coming, and
groaned. If Johnny came back while the older man
was here, it would be tragic. And with the robot
out of order, his father might be here for at least
an hour. Somehow Dick would have to get the
robot working-maybe in time to keep his father
from coming down at all.
Dick finally gave up the testing tricks and began
to go over the robot inch by inch, while the minutes
rolled by slowly. It seemed hopeless. Then he
grunted. On one of the eye lenses there was a tiny
speck of lead, hardly the size of a period. He flicked
it off with his finger-the robot moved forward,
picked up the hose, and began working stolidly

again, just as Bart Rogers came down the tunnel.
Tbe older man was rounder of face than Dick,
and heavier, but the resemblance was close. He
nodded as he saw the robot go back to work. "Nice
work, kid. What was wrong?"
Dick told him quickly, and his father nodded, but
the worry never left his face. "Fine. Must have
thrown off the machine's sight a little, but not
enough to show up on the meters. Sometimes these
robots act almost inteJligent, but mostly they make
a good dog look like a genius beside them. " He
dismissed it, and swung to face Dick sharply.
"Dick!"
Dick didn't like the sound of it, but he tried
to respond normally. "Yes, sir? "
"Dick, I just got a call over emergency circuit
one of the men thinks he saw a spook! If it's yours,
you'd better get it back before it wrecks anything.
I didn't mind your fooling with your pet out in
the hotlands, but you know better than to bring
one in here! They're dangerous, and you know itt"
"But Johnny wouldn't . .."Dick began.
Then he stopped, following his father's eyes. The
big hose in the robot's hands had gone limp, with
only a few trickling drops falling from it. Abruptly
the lights flickered and went out.
Dick cut on the torch in his helmet, just as his
10 Battle on Mercury
father switched over to the emergency band. He

flipped the tuning dial on his chest in time to hear
the last of a report coming in.
". . .pumps and lighting motors are shorted. The
spook only took a sideswipe at them, though. Fused
the main leads. We can get it fixed in an hour or
so, maybe. Never saw a wispy act like that before
seemed to know what it was doing, and I didn't
even have time to draw my blaster. "
..Okay, " Rogers' voice answered wearily. "Go
ahead with repairs. Not that it matters much, I
guess. "
He snapped back to the private radio channel
and jerked a thumb. Dick switched back at his
signal.
At the .first word, Dick knew that it was the
Chief Engineer speaking to him, rather than his
father.
"you can turn in your key at the locker room,
Dick, and pick up your belongings, " Rogers said
without a sign of emotion. "You won't need them
here. In fact, from now on, the mine's out of bounds
for you. Take the rest of the week off, and start
work in hydroponics Monday. That's alii"
He swung on his heel and started up the tunnel,
his helmet torch cutting a thin slice of light as he
moved away. Dick dropped back onto the stool,
Blame Johnny Quiclcsilver 11
swallowing painfully. He'd had it coming, he knew;

but it didn't make it any easier to take.His throat
ached and his eyes were burning. With a jerk, he
cut off his helmet light and hunched over in the
darkness, his shoulders heaving.
Blue-white light suddenly hit his eyes, and he
looked up to see Johnny come darting down the
tunnel. It stopped, then sped back, to return again,
teasing him to follow.
"Johnny, you . .. 1" Dick began thickly, but there
were no words to fit his feelings. His hand jumped
toward the blaster at his hip, and he yanked it out.
Johnny immediately darted to the box, shrinking to
a tiny ball, and began sliding through the plastic
wall until he was gone from sight. Dick started for
ward. Then he dropped the gun slowly back into
its holster! He couldn't even make himself shoot
the little wispy, he thought bitterly. He was just a
kid playing with pets, unable to act like a man.He
didn't belong in the mines.
Half an hour later he stood outside in the glaring
red, yellow, and brown of Mercury's surface. He
looked back at the little dome that marked the
entrance to the mine and again he swallowed
thickly.It didn't look like much-just a half-sphere
of silicone plastic, covered with a film of aluminum
that was shiny bright here where no air could
12 BoHle on Mercury
corrode it. It served to reflect most of the glare of

the sun and also to keep out the wispies, since the
metal film was grounded.
A mile away lay Sigma, the larger dome where
they lived. It had been built over the first mine,
until that vein had been exhausted. Then there
had been talk of building a tunnel to the new
mine, but nothing had come of it. Dick headed for
the big dome and began walking slowly toward it.
He might as well get used to it, since he'd be a
farmer there the rest of his life!
The cooling unit in his suit mumbled dully, and
the air from his tank sighed slowly as he breathed.
He wouldn't be any ordinary tank farmer, even
he'd be the black sheep of the whole dome, thanks
to Johnny Quicksilver.
A heavier suit�sleeve reached over his shoulder
and cut on his radio. "Not supposed to be out here
without that on, Dick," his father said, as the older
man fell into step beside him. "We're quitting for
the day, and I've been calling you five minutes. Sore
at me?"
Dick shook his head, not trusting his voice.
"I had a dog once, back on Earth," Rogers told
him. "Crazy fool dog that got vicious when he was
old. I got into plenty of trouble over him. Got your
pet with you?"
Blame Johnny Quicbilver 13
"You're not going to shoot him, are you?" Dick

asked quickly.
Rogers shook his head. "No-I don't want you
feeling the way I felt when they shot my dog. Just
get rid of him. And no more fooling with him, Dick.
When a thing gets dangerous, it stops being a pet."
Dick called uncertainly, but this time Johnny
obeyed, slipping through the plastic and leaping
out. The wispy bobbed up and down, and imme
diately began his teasing efforts to get Dick to chase
him. The boy walked along numbly, until the spook
finally gave up and went scooting off over the
horizon at better than a thousand miles an hour.
"Good riddance," Rogers said. "He could have
ruined the whole mine. We'll probably have to shut
down, anyhow. "
Dick jerked his eyes up to his father's. He'd
known there was trouble, but nothing that bad. In
his whole life the mines had never been shut down,
except once when the sun broke out in a major
storm that lashed Mercury with wild radiation.
Then the miners had all been driven back to the
twilight belt for safety. Four of the domes had been
ruined permanently.
"Storm coming," his father confirmed his guess,
looking up at the sun, where the flames leaped out
from its surface and spots showed clearly on its
14 BoHle on Mercury
face. "Might not be too bad, if we had supplies to

weather it out. But the supply rocket was due two
days ago, and we don't know what happened to it.
We're too short for an emergency, so I guess we1l
have to close down in a couple of days, unless an
other rocket comes. Better not tell your mother
about this.''
It was the last sentence that told Dick how
serious things really were. With supplies low and
the dome subject to a first-rate solar storm ...
"We'll make out," he said quickly. But seeing
his father's grim face, he wasn't so sure of it.
Cltapfcr 2 New Life for Pete
� ICK DISCOVERED the next morning that there was

no use in not telling his mother. Mter all her
years on Mercury, she had guessed at once the
reason for the worry of the miners. And it was im
possible to hide the fact that the ship hadn't come
with the supplies.
But Dick's younger sister, Ellen, was still run
ning around happily, not worrying about anything
as long as the school was closed. He came down
late to find her all set for him.
15
"Dickie lost his job! Dickie lost his job!" Her

voice was shrill, and she seemed to like it that
"
way."D·1ck'1e .. .
Dick's mother had come up behind her. "All right,
Ellen, I told you to behave. For that, you can wash
the dishes and go to the store! Now get along with
you. Dick, your breakfast's on the table."
But the damage was done. His mother sat with
him, trying to conceal her worry and to pretend
that everything was as it should be. But there was
no way to make him forget all that had happened
the day before.
Finally he got up, almost wishing he were starting
at hydroponics that morning. At least it would give
him something to do. With seven hundred people
in the dome of Sigma, there was no chance that
the news hadn't spread to everyone. He thought
about applying early at the tank farm, but he did
not want to see people yet.
Dick moped around another half-hour, until he
finally began to feel that the little apartment was
a trap, filled with his mother's worry and the sneer
ing face of his sister. He picked up his spacesuit
and went out through the door, trying to look as if
he had important business.
It wasn't until he was halfway to the outer lock
of the dome that he remembered Pete. Then his
New Life for Pete 17
steps quickened, and he began to forget the worst

of his misery.
Pete was the first robot ever shipped to Sigma
dome. He was an old-model robot, originally meant
for housework on Earth, but converted to stand the
heat here. His body was entirely of silicone plastic,
which made him fairly light, but which also had
proved too weak for the constant pressure at the
mine. FinaJly, he'd been turned over to hydro
ponics, where he'd spent a great number of years.
Eight months before, he'd failed for the last time.
The repair crew admitted that they couldn't fix
him, and that they didn't even understand some of
his circuits, since he was such an old model.
Dick had found him in the discard and had
rescued him. At his request, the robot had become
his, to do with as he liked. For months he had spent
his spare time working on it.
He put on his spacesuit at the lock and went out,
being careful to let them know where he was going,
so nobody would remind him that he couldn't go
to the mine. Pete was stored in the "out" shed,
where much of the repair work was done. It was
a simple open pit, covered with a reflecting roof,
built just outside the dome. There, without air,
repair work of delicate machines was much easier.
A vacuum tube could be opened and repaired, then
the glass sealed again. And tricky soldering was

easier where there was no oxygen to corrode the
metal.
This morning there was no one else working
there, and Dick was relieved by that. He was out
of view of everyone, though the watchman some
times wandered over to make sure no wispies were
coming too close to the dome.
Pete lay as Dick had left him, with his whole
chest off and the delicate wiring inside exposed.
He looked like a complete mess, partly because his
normal condition was almost human. Unlike the
new mining robots, he had only two legs and
could have been mistaken for a man at a distance.
Actually, Dick felt that Pete was almost repaired.
There had been a few old books that helped, and
Dick had been able to puzzle out most of the trouble
with him. He had a natural Hair for mechanics and
electronics, and had begun to make sense of all the
circuits. There hadn't been anything too badly
wrong with the robot except that his insulation had
begun to break down, and some of the little resistors
were burned out.
Dick began working on Pete, delicately wiring
in the new parts he had bought with his working
money and trying to test the operation with a small
meter. Nobody on Mercury had a private robot
and if he could take one home to his mother, she'd
New Life lor Pete 19
be the most envied woman on the planet. Besides, a

robot would be as good a pet as Johnny Quicksilver.
There was a sudden burst of static in Dick's
earphones as he thought of the creature, and he
turned around to find the wispy at his shoulder,
as if trying to see what he was doing. It may have
been waiting for minutes or have just arrived. But
Dick wondered for the hundredth time whether
it could read his mind.
"Johnny, you've got to stay away .. . "Dick began.
But a sudden glowing spot on the ground beyond
interrupted him. He ducked quickly, while Johnny
suddenly went scooting off. It had been an ion
beam from a blaster, and that wasn't good medicine
for men or spooks.
The watchman came thundering up and then
gulped noisily into his radio. "Dick-1 never saw
you! Hey, did I crisp you? Saw a blamed wispy
and took a shot at it! Uh, good thing I missed."
Dick got up furiously. Old Manny was getting
too old for his post if he went around firing first
and then looking. But the old man had already cut
off his radio and was legging it around the dome,
where Johnny had gone, his gun again making
sharp bursts against the dome.
Johnny was back beside Dick, almost at once,
dancing even more excitedly.

"Okay, have your fun," Dick told him. "Go ahead
and play. You'll find it unhealthy around here now.

Mter what you did yesterday, being my pet won't
save you. They're after you!"
Johnny bobbed about and then began teasing
again. But Dick turned his head away. He'd been
disappointed in the wispy, who knew better than
to tackle machinery. And he wasn't going to reward
it by giving in to its ideas now. Johnny continued to
try for a few minutes more, and then came over
to rest disconsolately by Dick's shoulder and hover
over the robot.
The job was nearly finished now. Dick had done
all he could to it, and it should be in working order.
It might not work quite as it had done when new
of course, but it should be good enough. He screwed
the plastic cover back on to its chest and threw
in the power switch.
Johnny darted down against Pete, cautiously test
ing for metal which might be dangerously grounded.
Finding none, he sank part way into Pete's chest
and then rose up to the solid head of the robot,
added for ornamental purposes only. Johnny seemed
to like to work his way through anything that was
a good insulator.
Pete twitched and squirmed. He bent his knees
awkwardly, and suddenly doubled in the middle.
A squawking sound came from his mouth, and his
head twisted crazily. Johnny jumped out in ap

parent surprise and then back in quickly.
"Pete," Dick called over the radio, as quickly as
he could set it to the robot frequency. "Pete, this is

your new master, Dick. Stop that, and get up."
"Yes, master Dick,"the robot answered dutifully.
Its speech had been the part that Dick had been
most doubtful of, but obviously that worked prop
erly. Yet the robot went on writhing and twisting.
Then, very slowly, it began to get to its feet! Johnny
had sunk entirely inside it now, and Dick had a
strong suspicion that the trouble was coming from
him.
"Come out of there, Johnny. If you ruin Pete,
111 tum you over to the watchman," he warned.
Johnny slipped out. As he left the robot's body,
Pete suddenly straightened and turned about firmly.
He faced Dick, and waited, the picture of the proper
behavior of a house robot.
Johnny obviously had been doing things to Pete,
but he hadn't harmed the robot, Dick decided.
Maybe this was fun to the wispy. He could probably
trigger the little relays inside the robot with his own
electrical energy, and make the body move about
in ways that Pete's not-too-intelligent mind couldn't
stop.
"Go to sleep, Pete," Dick said. The old robots
had a device for cutting off their limited thinking,

just as a man might sleep, but still leaving their
bodies ready for emergencies.
Almost instantly, Johnny darted back into Pete's
body, until he was completely invisible.
This time Pete wobbled only a little. He took
two steps away from Dick, turned again, and began
beckoning with one hand. As the action became
smoother, it took on a note of real urgency.
In spite of himself, Dick was impressed. The
wispy had been acting oddly for two days now
but this motion was unmistakable, if it meant what
it would mean from a normal robot. "Something
important, Johnny?" he asked doubtfully.
The robot head nodded quickly and emphatically.
Again the gesture to follow was repeated.
Dick considered it doubtfully. There were legends
that the wispies sometimes had led a prospector
to a good strike, but there were other stories of
how they lured a man out into the hotlands where
others of their own kind could fall on him. Dick
was pretty sure that Johnny liked him-but still . . .
Dick swayed doubtfully, until the robot appar
ently got tired of waiting-or Johnny inside him
did. The black silicone body turned more surely
this time and began walking away. After a few
feet it started off at a run.
Dick jumped out after it. "Johnny, come back
New Life lor Pete 23
here! Don't you go running off with my robot.

Come back here!"
In answer, there was a glow around the robot's
head, as if Johnny had let himself swell up a little
and project outside. But the feet moved on, even
faster.
Dick gave in. "Okay, you will-o'-the-wisp, if I
agree to come with you, will you wait for me?"
It seemed to be the right idea. Almost instantly,
the glow disappeared, and the robot stopped, wait
ing until Dick could catch up with it. Then, at a
more sedate speed, just fast enough to keep Dick
working hard to follow, it turned out across the
hotlands.
This was a fine business, Dick decided. If his
father knew what he was doing, he would really
catch it. Yet he couldn't let all his months of work
on the robot go to waste. And Johnny was driving
it along just out of his reach, where there was no
chance of his reaching the httle shut-off lever.
He glanced down at his air supply and figured
carefully. He had a full day's ration on him. If
the robot didn't go too far, no harm would be
done. And his suit was made with a metal outer
covering, down to his feet, which were solidly on
the ground. He wouldn't be in too much trouble
from other wispies, at least. But he didn't like the
idea of having to walk half a day, and maybe tum
24 Baffle on Mercury
around then to go back without the robot. He

wished he could trust Johnny better.
They carne to a big pool of liquid bronze-lead
and tin mixed. Immediately the robot turned aside
and began skirting around it, though the depth
couldn't have been too great for it. Dick grunted in
surprise. Johnny had learned a lot about people;
he seemed to know that wading through the hot
metal put too much of a strain on a man's cooling
system, and was setting the path accordingly.
When he carne right down to it, Dick had to admit
that the wispy obviously knew a lot more about
him than he did about it. And right now he could
have used a little more knowledge. He was getting
more worried with each step, now that the dome
was lost to sight.
One more mile, he promised himself. Then, if
Johnny wouldn't return the robot, he'd just have
to forget it.
At the end of the mile, though, Johnny was
closer than before, seeming at times to be within
reach. Dick kept trying to surprise him, and to
bound within reach of the power switch. Johnny
managed to avoid him, each time, but it was close
enough that Dick felt sure it was only a matter of
time until the robot missed.
They came down a ravine of rocky stuff, where
there was very little metal. Here Dick hesitated.
New life lor Pete 25
On that he'd be pretty well insulated, and it might

be safe for spooks to attack him. He had his blaster
with him, but if they ganged up on him, he wouldn't
be able to take care of all of them quickly enough.
They were almost through, though, when an
other wispy appeared. It came hurtling from the
north at full speed, jerking to a stop over the robot
before Dick could draw his blaster. The glow spread
out from Pete's head again, as Johnny came out of
the shell. Dick hesitated, seeing no further sign of
hostility, but not knowing what to expect.
For a second, the new wispy touched the edge
of the glow that was Johnny. Then it jerked off
north again. Johnny retreated into Pete, and the
ann of the robot beckoned Dick along more com
pellingly than before. Pete's legs stepped along
faster, too, trying to draw Dick to a higher speed.
He thought of a whole host of dangers, and yet
he was cmious. It might have been a wispy signaling
that there was to be an ambush for Dick further
on. But it might have been anything else, just as
easily. And the fact that he had been allowed to

pass through the danger spot unhanned made Dick
doubt that he had anything further to fear. Still,
he couldn't go much further before it became wiser
to return. He still had more than enough air, but
on Mercury it didn't pay to take chances.
Now Johnny was forcing the robot to go through
26 Bottle on Mercury
places that were rougher than any he had tried

before, as if trying to save every second of time.
The other wispy came back, darted down, as if
reporting, and then went on its way elsewhere.
Curiosity now had complete control of Dick.
He sensed that they were almost at their goal
as soon as Pete's legs suddenly increased speed,
and the robot with its wispy passenger disappeared
down into a hollow. Dick scrambled along, trying
to get up to the top of the little pile of rocks that
lay ahead.
Then he was where he could see. Down below,
in a small rocky section, one of the prospecting
tractors was stalled. It was caterpillar-treaded, and
looked like a small dome on its tracks. With these,
carrying air and supplies for weeks, the old pros
pectors who hunted new metal and ore strikes often
went from dome to dome, or clear to the center
of the hotlands. They could navigate almost any
where, and carried tiny atomic motors that were
good for months without replacements.
But this one had obviously got into trouble. It
must have caught something in one of its tracks
that had gradually wom away some of the links.
Now it was tilted at an angle, with the track off
and spread about, as if someone had tried to repair
it, and failed. And there was an air of hopelessness
about it.
Dick let out a useless yell, and ran down into

the hollow. He knew the tractor-it was the battered
old wreck of a prospector called Hotside Charlie.
The old man had spent hours at a time telling
Dick wild tales of the early days on Mercury when
Dick had been a mere kid. He had seemed almost
like an uncle to the boy, until he disappeared several
years before on one of the long hips such men
made.
Charlie had been on his way back, apparently.
And his luck had run out. Dick fumbled for his
radio and twisted it to the emergency band, but
there was no answer from the tractor. Then he
saw that there was a crack in the plastic shell of
the tractor-a crack big enough to let all the air
run out.
Pete had stopped beside the tractor and was
trying to open the tiny airlock that led inside, but
apparently Johnny hadn't yet learned how to con
trol the fingers. The wispy suddenly leaped from
the head of the robot, leaving it standing motion
less, and began dashing around the tractor in excited
circles.
Dick found the handle of the lock, and threw it
open. He dashed into it, threw open the inner
door, and glanced about with a rising fear as he
saw no sign of Charlie. For a moment, he gave
up hope. Then his eyes dropped to the floor by
the seat, and he saw a bulky spacesuit lying there,

stretched out.
He was beside it at once. From inside, the face
of Charlie stared out, as if the man were sleeping.
Dick gasped, but his fears were groundless. At his
touch, the old man's wrinkled face moved, aud his
eyes opened.
"Hi, Dick," he said. "Air low. No power. Ain't
dead yet though."
The effort was too much, and he lapsed back
into unconsciousness.
eltapfCf 3 Abandoned#
� OTSIDE CHARLm
'
had no business regaining con
sciousness at all, Dick saw. With his air running
out, the old man had cut down his oxygen
flow to a bare trickle, hardly enough to maintain
life, let alone consciousness. He had enough left
for no more than three hours at the rate he was
now using it, and a lot less than that if the flow
were increased enough for him to become active.
And with no power for his cooling units, it was
a wonder he could live at all. The shell of the tractor
29
30 BaHia on Mercury
still kept the radiation of the sun off him, of

course; but if he were moved outside, he'd bake
in half an hour.
Dick examined his own batteries hastily, and
shook his head. Both were lower than he liked, and
Pete's batteries were an old style that wouldn't
fit. He took one of his own and plugged it into
Charlie's suit, nodding as the little motor there
began to turn over briskly. But it left him with no
more time than Charlie had.They had to get back
to the dome in three hours, or Charlie would have
no air at all left, and Dick would be without power.
"Pete," he called. "Wake up and come in here."
Without Johnny to control him, the robot seemed
to work perfectly. It carne into the tractor at once.
Dick pointed to the old man, and stooped down
to pick up his legs. "Grab the head, Pete. We have
to carry him back to the dome. And Johnny!"
The wispy came at once, ducking through the
open lock of the tractor.
"Thanks for bringing me here, Johnny," Dick
told him. The wispy had been trying long enough,
and probably had even shorted the machinery in
the mine to get Dick out and lead him here. But
there was no time to think, even. "Now stay out of
Pete, Johnny. He has work to do."
Apparently satisfied, the wispy settled about five
feet above them and a hundred feet ahead, and
Abandoned 31
began leading the way. Dick nodded, and decided

to follow. Johnny had already proved that he could
pick trail according to the needs of his human
friend. It might save a few precious minutes.
With Pete carrying the heavier end, it was still
a burden. And there was no time to waste. Dick
settled into the fastest pace he could hope to keep
steadily, and struck out blindly after Johnny, with
Pete moving along behind him. He'd put the old
man's legs on his shoulders, and Pete had to support
the head even with that height. But apparently the
robot was equal to the job.
It was a nightmare before they ·had covered a
mile. The weight pressed down more with each

step, and Pete's best efforts to keep in step and
make the load easy were none too good. He had
more intelligence than a mining robot, but he was
a pretty sad imitation of a man.
At the end of an hour, there was no feeling left
in Dick. Each step was a matter of picking up a
leg and putting it down to a count that he kept
as fast as he could, but he had long since stopped
thinking of the distance ahead. He had to get old
Charlie back, he had to get Charlie back, he had to
get back!
It never entered his head to leave the old man.
Either they'd all get through, or he'd drop outside
with his burden.
32 BaHie on Mercury
He was almost unconscious at .the end of the sec

ond hour, but the legs under him still moved on,
following where Johnny led without thought. Then
a voice spoke weakly in his phones.
"You're a fool, kid-a hot-lead fool. Put me down
and go home. And tell 'em old Charlie died happy,
just knowing they still grow men in those domes!"
It snapped Dick out of his daze, cutting tluough
the pain and the fog until he seemed suddenly to
catch a second wind.
"Stop fighting yourself, Uncle Charlie, " he told
the old man. "You're wasting air. We'll all make it. "
And somehow, they did. Johnny suddenly
snapped up and jerked off toward the hotlands,
and Dick looked up to see the dome of Sigma only
five hundred feet away, with a group of men in
spacesuits piling out of the lock. He dropped to
his knees and felt himself crumpling down, with
the load of Charlie on top of him. But now it felt
good to give up.
When he came to, he was inside the dome, and
on his own bed. Across the room, Hotside Charlie
lay on the opened sofa from the living room. Dick's
neck muscles lanced with a grabbing pain as he
turned his head, but he managed to see that the
old man was breathing. And for once, Dick's sister
had no kid smart-aleckness on her face. She cried
out as she saw he was conscious, and started for
Abandoned 33
him. From the comer, Pete moved out quickly.

"Master Dick rests," he said flatly.
Then others were in the room, but Dick's sight
grew fuzzy, and he slipped back into unconscious
ness. It didn't matter. He, Johnny, and Pete had
done their job.
He felt almost normal the next day, and the
doctor assured him that the aches and pains that
were left from the long trip would disappear after
he moved around a little. It wasn't entirely true,
but he felt well enough to go down into the living
room, where it seemed that half the population of
Sigma had sat up through the night. They wanted
all the details. There wasn't much he could tell
them, and he kept it as short as he could, hoping
they would leave.
His father cut through the babble of voices, shak
ing his head. "Looks like we were wrong about that
pet of yours, Dick," he admitted. "He's been hang
ing around, and some of the men were trying to
shoot him. I suppose we'll have to call them off
now. We just thought he was following you, before.
Sure you're not making that up to explain your
running off into the hotlands without permission?"
He accepted Dick's denial, though most of the
others obviously weren't convinced that Johnny
could have meant well.
"Just crazy pranks. You can't tell about the
spooks," the chief of the repair gang said. "Besides,

I don't go for that business of a spook controlling
a robot. This Pete probably got some signal from
Hotside Charlie. They're both fixed with old-time
equipment. Took off after the signal, and the spook
just went along, hoping to suck juice out of the
robot. What I want to know is how Dick fixed that
robot. We can use Pete at the shops and the farms,
if he works right."
"He fixed him because he's a natural mechanic,
which is more than I can say for some who don't
believe his story," Dick's father told the man. "And
you won't use him without Dick's permission. The
boy was told he could have the robot, and that
stands! Now all of you get out, and go back to
work. \Ve've still got trouble to take care of."
There were mutters of agreement, and the worry
came back to the faces. They all began to move
out, arguing about whether anything could be true
about Dick's story. He watched them leave with a
mixed feeling of relief and anger.
"They don't believe me, do they?" he asked.
His father grinned wryly. "No, they don't. And
if your sister came back with a story like that, you
wouldn't believe her. But I guess you're right, at
that. A couple of us saw you coming back, just as
we were leaving the mine, and your Johnny cer-
, tainly looked as if he were leading you. Look, your
Abandoned 35
mother's got some food fixed up, if you feel like

eating. I've got to get back to the mine, but we'll
talk it all over later."
He left, and Dick went out to the kitchen, where
his mother was fussing over some of his favorite
foods. She started in by bawling him out for run
ning off like that, and wound up by running her
hands through his hair and telling him how Ellen
had been crying all night until he came to.
He liked it, somehow, though he felt embarrassed.
Then he tried to give Pete to her, but she refused.
''You're a good boy, Dick. And I'm just as happy
knowing you wanted to give him to me. But he's
yours. Land sakes, I wouldn't know what to do
with him. He's been driving me crazy, staring all
the time. He tried to wash the dishes this morn
ing-as if rd let any piece of metal and electricity
fool with my good Earth dishes. No, you keep him."
Dick grinned, and began to feel like himself
again. He'd never liked the repairman, who was a
recent replacement from Earth for the man who'd
done the work until a few years ago, but he decided
Pete would be more useful in the tank farms,
after all.
Then he remembered that he himself was going
to have to be useful there, and life was back where
it had been before. He shoved the food aside, and
got up.
Being a hero for a day was fine, but it still didn't

make up for having to be a tank fanner the rest
of his life.
Charlie was still sleeping, but Dr. Holmes seemed
to feel confident that all was going to be right with
the old man. "Just sleeping. He's worn out, and
his body is still full of poisons from all that heat
and bad air, but he'll be all right, Dick. How he
lived is more than I can see."
"Just wouldn't die," Dick guessed.
The doctor nodded. "That's about it. Medicine
has come a long ways since we used to take out
adenoids and let people run around sick with colds
all the days of their life. But it can't do anything
about some things; it takes a will to live. And these
old prospectors have that. Well, fm going. Let him
sleep until he wakes up, and you'll find him the
same as ever."
There was nothing for Dick to do except to dis
cuss his trip with the people he met wherever he
went. And that grew tiresome after a while. He put
on his suit and went outside to look for Johnny,
but the wispy had vanished. Apparently the men
had scared him off for the time being.
"Nope," the watchman told him, in answer to
his questions. "Ain't seen him and don't want to,
unless it's through the sights of my blaster. Can't
trust them. Freaks, that's what they are. Get you
Abandoned 37
off guard, then try to come in and ruin the dome.

fm wise to them."
Dick should have known better than to expect
most of the miners to change their minds about
Johnny. Even his father was only half convinced
of Johnny's good intentions. They were all much
more interested in the fact that Pete was working
again than in anything Johnny could do.
By evening most of the excitement had died
down, and the trouble threatening the dome had
replaced Dick's adventure in everyone's mind. The
miners coming back were glum, unsure of whether
they should go on working or not. There had still
been no word of the missing rocket.
Bart Rogers admitted it openly, at supper. "No
word," he said. "I guess we can figure that some
thing happened to it and that we'll have to wait
for the next one. Funny, though. You'd think they'd
get worried when it didn't come back and fly over
to see how we're doing."
It had been puzzling Dick, too. He knew that
radio reception from the main city in North Twilight,
the main shipping center to the domes, was bad
enough at best, and probably impossible now. But
it didn't explain everything.
A voice from the hall caught their attention, and
they swung to see old Hotside Charlie standing
there. He was still a little shaky, but his eyes were
fully alive, and he seemed to be pretty much his

old self. He'd obviously had Pete help him down
the stairs, but now he shook off the robot and came
forward, sinking into the chair Dick's father pointed
out.
It was impossible to guess his age, though it
must have been at least sixty. His hair had been
speckled with gray ever since Dick had first seen
him, and his grizzled beard hid much of his face.
The deep tan and the network of wrinkles were
more from Mercury's hot sun than from age. And
his eyes were snapping and alert. Age had made
no difference in his body-it was partly slouched
normally, but that was habit. And there was neither
fat nor traces of gauntness about him.
His clothes were shiny and old-fashioned, but
they were as clean as they could be kept within a
tractor. An old plastic jacket seemed to have been
as ageless as he was. Under it, he wore a plain gray
shirt, and a pair of black trousers of heavy material.
They had been quiet while he seated himself and
began to help himself to the food. Now he chuckled
with appreciation. "Best eating this side of heaven,
Mizz Rogers. If I'd a been ten years younger, I'd
have given that there husband of yours a real tough
fight. You betcha! "
Then his eyes became serious, as he turned to
face Bart Rogers.
Abandoned 39
"You ain't going to hear from that rocket ship

of yours, Bart. That's what I was a-coming to tell
you. Came whooping along like a fool, didn,t watch
what was happening. Old treads, went to pieces in
no time after I hit that rock. Cracked open the
tank, spilled me out of my seat, and blew out my
power pile. Then I had to get smart and try to fix
it, instead of coming on afoot! Should have left
me to get my dusting-off, Dick. Getting old, no use
any more. Started seeing things, even-thought a
blamed wispy was hanging around waiting for me
to die."
"Probably there was one there, according to what
Dick saw," Rogers said. He knew that the old man
would tell his story in his own way, but this time
he cut back to the original subject. "You were
coming to tell us about the rocket, Charlie?"
"Yeah. Sure was. High-tailing it along, fool
enough to think the tractor could take that much
speed. Your rocket ship cracked up better'n a hun
dred miles from here, Bart. I saw it come down
dunno why, but I guess they had a young pilot
who forgot to roll her over when the top got too
hot."
He munched thoughtfully on some yeast and soya
"steak," and shook his head before going on.
He'd gone at once to where the ship landed, but
he'd been too late. The rocket had cracked up com-
40 BoHle on Mercury
pletely, and the atomic pile that should have pow

ered the radio hadn't been working. Charlie had
tried to get a signal out, but he didn't have power
enough for the set in the rocket.
The supplies had all been ruined, since the ship
had landed on its cargo holds, and they lay scat
tered over the surface, already burned beyond use
fulness in the heat of the sun.
The pilot had been killed, of course. Charlie had
done his best to give the proper burial, according
to prospector custom-which meant finding a cavern
big enough to hold the body and saying a few quick
words over it. Then he'd gone back to search the
ship and see if it belonged to Sigma dome, where
his friends might need word of it.
,.Found a piece of paper, too," he finished.
"Orders. Figured it was important to you folks, so
I came highballing along, trying to get it to you
afore all the radio died in the storm that's coming
up. H ere. "
He passed the charred, crumpled paper across,
and Bart read it. He handed it to his wife, and then
gave it to Dick.
Some of the words were missing, but there was
enough to give the story. The rocket wasn't sup
posed to bring them more than a minimum of
supplies, after all. It had been sent to take them
to East Twilight, where they were to hole up with
Abandoned �1
the men from other domes. The solar storm due

was expected to be the worst in all the history of
the domes, and none of the little cities in the hot
lands would be able to stand it.
The men of Sigma dome would have to abandon
it and get back to East Twilight at once. But
without the rocket, there was no way to reach
the larger settlement. It had been two days since
the ship should have reached East Twilight, and
no second ship had come for them, so there wasn•t
much chance of another rocket being sent.
Something had gone wrong, it seemed. And now
they were abandoned, without supplies, to face
the storm by themselves.
eltapfCf 4 No Answer from Twilight
T a busy night. The Council of Sigma
I
HAD BEEN
had been called hastily, and had heard the story

again from Charlie, this time surprisingly simple
and direct in manner. Then the council of war had
begun. There was little enough the miners could
do, of course. But each had hoped that somehow
somebody else would come up with an answer.
Dick had sat in on the council, since it was at
his father's home, and since Charlie had snorted
42
No Answer from Twilight 43
and bucked at the idea of excluding the boy. But

he'd been as empty of ideas as any of them.
It had been his father who had proposed the
weak solution that had finally been adopted. The
mines, of course, would be closed at once, and
Sigma would go on emergency rationing of every
thing. The chief need was for power, since the
uranium slugs they were using in their atomic piles
were all due for replacement and needed to have
the waste products removed from them. There
would be some power from the solar-oven, which
could be converted to run one of the boilers and
generators, but that would be only a slight help.
As soon as the decision was made, all useless
lights were turned off-and that meant everything
more than a single smaJl bulb in each home. They
couldn't cut power for the hydroponic tanks-that
was needed if they were to have food and fresh
air. But everything else would be kept to a mini
mum, and even the cooling units would be cut
down, until the temperature rose to ninety.
But all that was only a half-measure. They still
had to get word either to East Twilight where they
were supposed to go or to North Twilight, from
which the rocket had been sent. But that was a
poor hope, and they knew it. The storm was already
building up, creating so much static that radio
transmission was almost impossible.
BoHle on Mercury
"There's still the ship," Rogers had said. "Ac

cording to Charlie, it has been pretty badly bat
tered up, but we might be able to get it working
enough to reach East Twilight. Not with us aboard,
but with one man who could tell them we need
help."
The repairman, Snaith, protested. "How are we
going to get to the rocket? You expect us to walk
a hundred miles through the hotlands and carry
it back on our shoulders, Rogers?"
Charlie had taken as much dislike to the man
as Dick, who felt that Snaith only repaired machines
because he knew of nothing better to do, not be
cause he really liked them. Now the old man
snorted in disgust.
"It's been done, sonny. I mind a time when I
was young and not such a fool I figgered I had
to fool around with a busted tractor. 'Course, I
didn't have my power all burned out, either. But
I walked six hundred miles through the hotlands,
pulling my supplies on a sled. Anyhow, the hot
lead fact is you only got to go out to my tractor.
Fix that, and you don't have to walk."
It had been the first suggestion that offered any
hope, and the men seemed to feel that it should
have been thought of before. But they were unused
to thinking in terms of the tractors, since the domes
had no need for such things. The plan was passed
No Answer from Twilight AS
at once, and Rogers, Dick and Charlie were selected

to go out and fix it. Snaith had acted angry at the
selection of Dick instead of himself, but the repair
ing of Pete by Dick, after he was junked, had con
vinced most of them that he would be better for
the job.
Now the three were halfway to the tractor, this

time with a rough sled containing repair parts,
oxygen, tools, and fresh batteries, which Pete was
pulling behind them. Charlie seemed to be as strong
as ever, and kept up a continual stream of chatter
about the surface around them.
Suddenly he paused and looked up. "Bet it's
your pet spook, Dick," he said. "Call him down,
and let's invite him along."
Rogers frowned, and shook his head. "Better
leave well enough alone, Charlie. Those batteries
would make a nice meal for a wispy. I think Johnny
may be friendly, but I don't know how smart
he is."
Charlie grinned. "Trouble with you, Bart, is that
you think living in the domes is living on Mercury.
You should ask a prospector some time. We get
around. We run into both kinds of spooks-the
wispies and the demons. This one is a wispy, sure
enough, hot-lead all the way through. Call him
down, Dick"
BaHfe on Mercury
Dick put in a call, and Johnny came darting

down, circling around at a safe distance until he
seemed to decide that the other two men were harm
less. Then he set about hunting out the best road
for them, seeming to make allowances for the sled
behind them.
"Two kinds of spooks?" Dick asked Charlie, not
sure that he had heard right.
"Two kinds, at least. Of course, not all us pros
pectors will tell you that. A lot of young fools
came in after this planet got civilized. But you
take it from a man who's spent forty years a-chasing
around, some of it back when nobody worried about
spooks eating their power, because they didn't have
that much fancy equipment. Some spooks are nat
ural enemies. They'll eat electricity anywhere, and
they don't care how they get it. Downright mean.
Can't trust 'em. But they ain't all like that."
He shook his head. "I mind me of a time when
I was still green here. Thought I knew it all. Got
out in the middle of the hotlands and got lost. 'S
true, so help me. Got plumb lost. Sun overhead,
and no way to tell east from west. Started out
fine, but spent a whole day getting nowhere. Then
I seen a spook a-following me. So I offered him a
chance to show me the way and I'd give him all
my spare batteries. Just a fool kid, a-talking like
you might talk to a dog back on Earth. But he

come down, quick as you please, and started jump
ing off one way, corning back, and doing it again.
Took me along for three days, till I found I could
find my own way. I paid him off, and we left each
other to mind our own business. "
"I never heard of spooks being friendly, " Rogers
said.
"How could you? You miners take a shot at
every spook that comes along. Young squirts who
come out now and call themselves prospectors, they
do the same. Naturally, the spooks don't go for
that. They got men pegged as enemies now. The
smart ones, that is. T'others don't care. "
"Then Johnny isn't like some of the others?..
Dick asked.
"Nope. I never heard it, so maybe nobody else
saw it. But I seen one of the demons, the mean
spook-kind, get beaten and chased away when he
tried to ruin me once. I'd been sort of carrying on
a conversation, you might say, with a wispy that
was following me, and the wispy really lit into that
demon. You betcha. Demons don't have much
brains. They're mean. They eat wispies, too, I
heard. Tough on wispies, them demons. And men
come along, a-taking over Mercury and killing off
both kinds, not caring which is which. There used
48 BoHle on Mercury
to be a lot more like Johnny when I was a young

man."
"That's all fine,'' Rogers told him, and Dick
could see that his father was half convinced, but
not willing to accept the old man's words as final
proof. "But how do you tell a wispy from a demon?"
"You don't, until he acts like a wispy,'' Charlie
admitted.
"Then we have to shoot first. We can't take
chances," Rogers reminded him. "One mistake
could ruin a dome."
Charlie nodded glumly. "Yep. Guess you're right.
Might be a good thing, too, get back the way
things used to be. But I guess you can't do much
different from what you do."
They had reached the tractor by then, and the
three men fell to work at once. Pete was little help.
He could carry things, but it was harder to tell
him what to do than to go ahead and fix them.
They sealed the crack first, making the dome air
tight again, and coupled up the tanks of air.
Dick's father went in to work on the little atomic
pile; as an engineer, he knew how to do it without
getting radiation bum, and Dick knew better than
to fool with such things until he knew more
theory. He came back after a few minutes to an
nounce the trouble was simply a broken power line.
They coupled in the new batteries as he fixed

it, and the cooling motors started at once. In a
half-hour the dome of the tractor would be livable
again. And with the power line fixed, the big
driving motor could run.
The treads proved to be more trouble. Dick
found that several of them had been scraped by
a big hunk of something like carborundum. The
dome had had no replacements for the treads, and
Charlie had meant to buy a new track set when he
next reached civilization, so he had none. Dick
fussed and fumed over it as he began welding
the broken bits together and trying to plate on
hunks of steel to replace the worst worn spots. It
was a fair job when he finished. The tractor might
run for months, with luck-or it might hit something
and go bad the next minute. He could only hope,
as they worked the track back on its rollers.
But at last it was done, and they climbed inside
the tractor, sending Pete back to Sigma dome with
the sled. Johnny seemed to guess where they were
going, and set out, hovering close to the tractor,
but pointing the way.
It got rougher as they went along, but the repair
job Dick had done seemed to stand up, and he
began to breathe more easily. He had to admit to
himself that he would have hated to try to go over
this section of Mercury on foot. Maybe Charlie

had done so years before, but it wasn't something
that could be done as a matter of course.
They were making good time now, averaging
better than thirty miles an hour. The tractor could
have gone faster, but Charlie was taking it easy
this time.
Dick spotted the rocket when the old man pointed
it out, and his heart sank. It had come down on its
side and had smashed in whole sections of its hull.
The cargo cases were all around, but there was no
use examining them. The ground here was thinly
coated with a layer of liquid lead, and the precious
cases of new uranium rods would have been con
taminated beyond any hope of salvaging them.
"Don't have to fix it too good," Charlie tried to
comfort him. "So the hull leaks. Let it. Get a man
in there in a spacesuit, and don't bother with the
hull. All he's got to do is make East Twilight."
It was some help, but it didn't make repairing
the damaged driving units any easier. Fortunately,
the big rocket tubes hadn't been hurt. But auto
matic dumps had gone into effect at the impact.
They were designed to keep the pile from reach
ing too high a level in an emergency, and they
had thrown out some of the uraniwn that powered
the motors. There wasn't enough left to get the
machine into the space above the ground.
Dick's father had no idea of repa:U-ing it then.

All he could do was to look it over and see whether
there was any chance of getting it to work again,
using whatever the dome could provide. He began
taking inventory, and his frown was indication
enough to Dick that it wasn't going to be easy.
"I don't know," he reported finally. "Some of the
controls are pretty badly ruined. That might be
all right, if we had one of the pilots who can fly
a ship by the feel of it. But nobody in Sigma is
more than an amateur. To get it up and keep it u p
is going to be a problem. Besides, we can't get
enough power to make it work the way it should.
If we get the main drive working enough to lift it
and handle three of the steering tubes, we'll be
lucky."
"Thought you could fix anything, Bart," Charlie
protested. "You're an engineer, doggone it."
"But only a mining engineer, Charlie. I'm not
a rocket expert. Only time I ever saw a rocket
motor working was when I came here from Earth.
Then we all had a brief look at it. I know the theory
to some extent, and I can figure a lot of this out,
but I can't guarantee any results. How about you,
Dick? Think you can fix the controls?''
Dick studied them, and shook his head. "Not
in time, Dad. I never found a book on them, and
I'd have to spend at least a month working over
52 BaHia on Mercury
some of those things to get the feel of them in my

head. That's the way I fixed Pete."
"Yeah." Rogers shrugged. "Wish I could have
sent you back to Earth for a real engineering de
gree. Well, we don't have a month, so I'll have to
do what I can."
He went down into the engine hold, to see what
he could find, and came up looking unhappy about
it. The list in his mitten had grown longer.
"'We might as well go back to Sigma," he told
them. "I think we can find everything we need,
but I still don't know. But there's one chance, if it
works at all. They've got a couple of the new
super-power transistors in the radio here. With them
in place of our old tubes, we might get out enough
power to signal Twilight. If we can't-well, then
we'll just have to see what we can do here."
He began yanking out the three-inch cubes that
were the transistors-crystals that could amplify a
signal. They had been used since the middle of
the twentieth century, but had only been perfected
to handle real power within the last ten years.
"Why not use them here?" Dick asked.
"Because the radio blew out on landing, and
the only thing that isn't ruined by high voltage is
this transistor hookup," his father told him. "'Take
a look!"
He had thrown back the cover of the set, and

Dick took a glance inside. It was enough to see
that his father had been right beyond any shadow
of doubt.
Johnny was waiting outside the ship, and Charlie
turned to Rogers quickly. "Power left in anything
here?"
"Nothing he can damage," Rogers answered. "The
air-conditioning batteries are still charged, but
they're no good for anything else-another new
model that won't fit. Charlie, sometimes I agree
with you. Specialization can be carried too far."
Charlie nodded emphatically. Then he grinned.
"I don't worry about Dick's pet ruining things. He
knows what will cause trouble and what won't, and
you can bet he only jinxed your mine motors a little
because he figured Dick had to find me-must have
known about your rocket crashing. They are smart,
Bart. What I was a-thinking was that maybe he
could use a square meal. He looks a mite peaked
with all this running after us."
For once Rogers laughed. Johnny looked like any
other wispy, and they were all exactly alike, as
far as men could see-any peakedness he felt would
show only to others of his kind. But he dragged out
two of the batteries. Johnny jumped for them, and
there was a brief Hash as he sucked out the energy
54 BoHle on Mercury
in them. Then he went dancing ahead of them, and

settled down to the job of guiding the tractor back
to Sigma.
In the dome, Rogers and Dick wasted no time
in reporting. It took half an hour to adjust the
radio there to use the big transistors, and new
power leads to carry enough current for them. Out
side the little radio shack, the whole city stood
waiting, while Rogers himself warmed up the set
and adjusted it to its highest efficiency.
He sat pounding on the key, which could send
Morse code that went through static better than a
voice communication. For two hours he kept it
up, alternating between sending and listening. But
all he got was static, and he finally left it to another
man while the three went home and to hed.
In the morning they were awakened by wild cries.
But it wasn't success. During the night a spook
had somehow gotten into the dome. Probably the
nerves and worry had made someone careless about
one of the smaller locks. But in any event, it had
then gotten into the radio shack and had managed
to ruin all the important parts of the set in sucking
out power. Nobody knew whether it had escaped
or was still in the dome.
"It wasn't Johnny," Dick protested.
His father nodded, a little doubtfully. "Better
keep him away, anyhow," he said unhappily.
"They'll shoot first and worry later. Besides, it
doesn't matter."
Twilight hadn't answered-and now there would
be no answer. Probably North Twilight thought
that the rocket had already carried Sigma to East
Twilight, and East Twilight thought the plans had
been changed. Because of the solar storm, the two
cities were almost certainly cut off from each other
now.
There would be no relief rocket. And the only
hope now was to get the ruined ship repaired.
eftapfCf 5 Only Two Weeks
lHE EMERGENCY RATIONS were cut still further.

From now on, no power could be used in any
of the homes, and the dome itself would be
kept in a sort of half-bright condition. Fuel would
have to be conserved to the limit.
To make matters worse, some of their precious
supply of partly exhausted uranium slugs would
have to be taken to the ship. They had debated
over it for hours, while trying to make sure that
every possible bit of uranium was taken that could
56
Only Two Weeks 57
be spared, but Rogers was still uncertain as to

whether it was enough. His final answer was the
only possible one-it had to be.
Men were busy making a thorough survey of
the situation as Dick, Charlie and Rogers left, tak
ing three other men with them, and carrying a
load of supplies on a rough sled that had been
rigged up behind the tractor. Meantime, the only
two who knew anything about flying a rocket were
busily comparing notes, trying to fill in on theory,
and devouring the few scraps of information that
were to be found in the dome. Neither felt confi
dent of his ability as a pilot, but the one who
seemed to know the most-after they had decided
that-would take his chance.
The treads on the tractor had been gone over
and put in better condition while the three slept,
and now they churned along at a rapid pace, taking
it easy only on the roughest sections where the
sled might be hurt at too much speed.
Johnny hadn't appeared, and Dick was worried.
He felt sure that the wispy had not been guilty
of ruining the radio, but the sudden absence of his
pet looked suspicious. On the other hand, he was
hoping that the creature wouldn't show up. Two
of the men were riding outside on the sled, and
they would almost surely fire at the first sight of
a wispy. They didn't care to hear about the differ-
ence between spooks of one kind and those of

another. To them, a spook was a spook, and they
had a score to settle, even beyond their usual
hatred of the creatures.
It looked as if Johnny would stay away, Dick
decided, and relaxed a little. Then the creature
appeared, coming in from the north at full speed,
and braking to an instant stop in front of the
tractor.
"Spook!" the radio in the tractor said in a voice
that belonged to one of the two men.
··Dick's pet," Rogers answered over the set. "Take
it easy. We don't know he killed the radio, and
he's done us a few favors."
"Don't care, we haven't time to fool around.
Swing the tractor a bit, Bart, and give us a good
shot at him!"
Charlie got up suddenly, and pulled his helmet
down. He winked at Dick, then started out through
the lock of the rapidly moving tractor, while Rogers
went on driving it along at a steady clip. The old
man appeared on the little ledge outside, and his
blaster was in his hands.
"You men back there ain't sitting pretty," his
voice came over the speaker. ''Now if you want to
try trading shots with me, why go right ahead.
Only I've had it tried on me before, you betcha.
Only Two Weeks 59
Or just take a shot at that wispy, and see what

happens."
"You wouldn't kill us!"
"Nope! But fd sure singe you till you wished
I had finished the job. I don't like guys that won't
pay a debt-and you wouldn't be a-riding on this
trip-which is the only hope you got, in case you've
forgot-if it wasn't for that wispy. He's a friend of
mine, boys. He sure is. I figger I sort of owe him
about thirty years more life. And I don't let my
friends get hurt. Clear enough?"
They grumbled at him, but the old man stood
his ground. Rogers smiled wryly, but didn't inter
fere. At last the old prospector came back inside,
after a final warning about what would happen if
any trouble came to the wispy.
"When you believe in something, kid," he told
Dick, "don't you never stop to wonder. You back
it up! Brains are nice things to have, but they's
times when feelings count for more. You betcha.
Okay, Bart, I'll take over the driving now."
They reached the ship without any trouble. Ob
viously, the men didn't like the way Charlie had
handled the situation, but they had a healthy re
spect for his ability, and they took it out only by
grumbling among themselves. When they saw the
job ahead of them, even that stopped. There was
60 BoHle on Mercury
no time for carrying on a feud when the safety

of the whole dome depended on their working
together.
Rogers had to handle the refueling of the ship
by himself, since it was again a matter of know
ing how to take all necessary safety measures around
atomic power. He went about it at once, with only
occasional words to the men regarding the other
work.
Dick had begun to work on the control system,
trying to find some sense to it. He had recognized
the impossibility of getting all the finer instruments
to work, but he'd hoped that some of the automatic
safety devices and piloting aids could be put into
some kind of order. Now, as he dug into their
complexities, he doubted it. They were badly dam
aged, partly by the force of the landing and partly
by the wild surge of electricity that must have gone
through them.
In many cases it was not just a matter of re
pairing the mess, but of having to substitute parts
which they did not have.
He began to wonder whether even the best me
chanic who knew the instruments inside and out
could have done much with them.
Fortunately, the main steering devices were
tougher. Some of them worked through motors,
but the motors were on a different circuit and
Only Two Weeks 61
had not been damaged. Most of them still de

pended on the old combination of cables and
hand power-probably because they were meant
to work when everything else failed. Nowadays,
most pilots never touched the older controls, but
they had to be there for emergencies.
In the hands of a skilled pilot they would have
been sufficient. But with rookies trying to guide
the ship, it would have been a lot safer to leave
some of the work up to the tiny mechanical brains
that had been devised.
The steering tubes on one side had all been
bent by the force of tl1e landing. And there was no
way to get around the need for them. Rogers had
studied the situation, and finally told the others
flatly tllat they would have to be fixed in the most
direct and most difficult manner.
Dick came out from his hasty work with the con
trols to find the rest of the men using their picks
and digging instruments to work a passage under
the ship, until they could get to the tubes. He picked
up a pick and started forward, but his father's
voice called him back.
"Leave that to men who've worked in the mines
long enough to know how, Dick. I've got another
problem for you."
It turned out to be equally nasty. The big rocket
tube had landed where some of the liquid lead
62 BaHie on Mercury
on the surface had run back into it. There, out of

the direct radiation from the sun, it had cooled off
just enough to turn solid again. Until that was
removed, using the tube would have been pure
suicide.
Dick groaned, but he knew his father was right.
It had to be gotten out, and he was the best man
for the job, since the others knew their work better
than he would have known it.
It didn't matter if some of the lead at the outlet
of the big rocket remained. But back where the hot
gasses first came in, it had to be scraped off by
hand, to give it a clear path. Once it had that, it
would blow the rest of the lead out by itself.
He crawled back inside, barely able to squeeze
in. The light on his helmet helped, but it glared
off the round tube walls, and seemed to dazzle
him as much as it illuminated the parts where
he had to work.
To make matters worse, no tools had been
brought along for such work, and there were none
that served very well among the tools normally
carried on the ship. He finally settled on a big
section broken from one of the sharp shovels, to
gether with a knife that Charlie dug up.
It was slow going, and his cramped position
didn't help. The lead was soft enough to cut away,
Only Two Weeks 63
but it had to be scraped right down to the surface

of the tube. And the roundness seemed to have
been especially designed to make it impossible to
get at all the lead.
Dick had to come out several times and give
his cramped muscles a chance to relax. Each time,
he saw that the men were having harder going
with their digging. The lead ran down into the
tunnel they were cutting, and they had to install
a system of dams around the diggings in order to
keep it from filling the hole faster than they could
throw it out.
"Never mind," Rogers told them. "We counted
on having things go wrong. When I told you we'd
finish it today, I was thinking it could be done in
three hours at the most. So we have time enough."
It was a somewhat cheering idea. But it didn't
make the work any easier. Dick wondered how long
it would have taken if they'd had to nt the ship
to carry the village off to East Twilight, even if
they had had sufficient supplies for the job. Weeks,
he suspected. All they were trying to do was to
get something off the ground that would stay off
long enough to get to Twilight. That meant that
they had to fix only the strongest and most basic
parts of the ship-which naturally were less dam
aged than most of the rest of it.
He grimaced, as he realized it would probably

be about as good a ship when they finished as
men had used to reach the moon of Earth on their
first flight into space. But conditions were different.
Then the men who flew it had been trained for
long months, and had had all their plotting done
for them before they left. This time, only luck and
prayers would keep it up.
He finally finished the job as best he could, and
his father inspected it carefully. It seemed to pass
satisfactorily.
The men had finished the tunnel under the ship
and were just cleaning up around the damaged
tube as they came out. Dick watched them, trying
to rest himself. But he wasn't finished, he found.
His father signaled for him to follow, and they
went down to inspect the damage.
It had been more than Rogers had counted on.
The tube was totally useless.
For a second, they stood staring at it. Then
Rogers shrugged. "Get some of the men to prying
off one of the other steering assemblies-the one
we won't be using," he ordered into his radio. "Dick,
give me a hand in cleaning out this mess. "
They chiseled the damaged tube assembly out
of its fastenings, and lined up the holding devices
as best they could. When the replacement came
down to them, they found that it fitted an entirely
Only Two Weeks 65
different set of holes. More specialization. Dick was

beginning to agree with Hotside Charlie. When two
things served about the same function but in dif
ferent places, they should still be made the same.
They drilled out the holes with their biggest
drill, and then had to ream them bigger by hand,
using whatever would fit. It was slow, backbreaking
work. But at last the tube went into position, and
they began screwing down the bolts.
It wouldn't do as a permanent job. More than an
hour would probably loosen it. But with luck, it
would be used for no more than a minute or so
in the trip, since it had to be used only to correct
the main steering mechanism. It should last.
"Okay," Rogers said at last. ..That's all we can
do now. We might as well go home and take a
break. If the boys who are trying to be pilots are
ready, we'll bring them back in the morning. We
all need a good night's sleep, and so do they,
probably."
Night, of course, was purely a matter of choice
here, since Mercury always presented the same
face to the sun. Here in the hotlands it was always
noon. But men had grown up with night and day
a part of their lives for untold generations, and
they still kept the same divisions that were natural
on Earth. Repeated tests had proved that it was
the most efficient way for them to work.
They drove back, each plagued by doubts, since

all of them had seen some of the poorness of the
makeshift repairs. One of the men looked up at
Rogers. "How much chance do you figure, Bart?"
"About one chance in three, I'd guess-and I may
be optimistic. I can figure on the troubles with the
ship, but I can't really guess how bad our pilots
will be."
It wasn't cheerful, but it was obviously a better
chance than they had thought. Dick suspected his
father was making it sound like· an honest state
ment, but still being optimistic to keep them from
knowing how bad it must be.
Sigma was an unhappy place when they reached
it and drove the tractor inside. The news that the
ship was repaired helped to cheer them up for a
few minutes, but it didn't last long. During the day,
most of them had discovered just how little their
chosen pilot knew about a ship.
It was Snaith, of all people, who had been given
the job. He didn't look too happy, though his worry
seemed to be for the dome, and not just for himself.
"I was up with my brother a few times, and he
was a pilot," he told them. "J guess maybe I handled
the controls two or three hours. But it was just a
little private ship, a lot different from these big
jobs. And then we took off from a tail position. I
Only Two Weeks 67
don't know anything about taking off from the side,

the way you say this ship is."
The other man who had done a little piloting
admitted that it was more than he had done. He'd
relieved a friend at the steering of one of the ore
tugs, but had never made any kind of a landing
or take-off.
Surprisingly, Charlie turned out to be an asset.
He rubbed his bearded chin, and his eyes seemed
to tum inward to examine his memory better.
"Seems to me I've seen 'em take off from the side,"
he said. "Used to have to in some places, where
they couldn't land on their tail, beca.use the ground
was so uneven. Nothing to it. You get her warmed
up, and then you turn on your bottom steering
rocket full. When she's really roaring, you cut on
the big tube. Takes you up fast, and you just have
time to cut off the steering job. Rough work-but
men have done it before."
Snaith still didn't look happy about it, but his
face cleared up some. "Okay, we'd better get to
gether, and I'll see what I can figure out from your
memory. It may help-and we sure need help."
They went off, while the committee that had
been taking inventory came up. The faces of the
men were even longer than the rest of the faces
around them.
"We figure we've got two weeks to live, if the

ship won't work," the head of the committee re
ported to Rogers. "We just hit it at the worst time.
Last time we got other supplies instead of uranium
slugs. This time we were to get that. But we've
got about the most contaminated set of slugs in
the whole planet right now. If we are lucky-well,
then we'll be alive two weeks from now. And we1l
be getting ready to cook to death the next day!"
eftapfCf 6 Crack-Up
�ou WOULD HAVE to live here," Charlie complained

over coffee that next morning. "Now, iffen you
lived at Beta dome or even Epsilon, you'd be
fixed. Why, we'd just take the tractor and go a-riding
right into East Twilight. We'd be there in four-five
days, and they'd get a rocket right back to us."
"But we're not in those domes, Charlie," Dick's
mother reminded him. "We're out in Sigma."
"Yeah. You betcha." The old man stopped to
69
swallow, shaking his head. "You're in Sigma. And

it has to be the fool dome right in the middle
of nowhere. You can't go to East Twilight-got
the whole belt of canyon country that way, and
no tractor would go through it. You can't make
West Twilight, because you'd have to cut way
around the Calamity zinc lakes. And you're way
too far south to hit North Twilight, besides which
you ain't fixed to get through Big Lead River. Now
if they had a South Twilight, you'd be all fixed.
Only they ain't. Tch!"
It summed up the situation, Dick had to admit.
He had been thinking along the same lines as he
lay trying to go to sleep, and had been studying
the big map of Mercury in the back of one of his
Earth-type books.
''You didn't have to come here, Uncle Charlie,"
Ellen reminded him. They'd all given up the pre
tense of trying to keep things from the children.
And, all in all, the younger children seemed to be
taking it better than the adults.
"Nope, sure didn't," Charlie admitted. "But I
got a hankering to see my friends that I hadn't eat
with in a couple years. So I lit out for here. Big
mistake. Always knew a man had no business hav
ing friends."
"\Ve'd be in a lot worse spot without you," Dick's
mother told him. "Stop grumbling, Charlie. You
Crack-Up 71
probably like every bit of this. You used to claim

trouble made a man come out of his shell."
Charlie grinned at her and held out his cup for
more coffee. But he had nothing more to say, and
the rest were ready to take Snaith out to the ship.
Dick wasn't sure whether he'd be permitted to
come along this time, but habit apparently led to
their expecting him with them. He climbed into the
tractor with Snaith, his father, Charlie, and the
doctor. Holmes was supposedly going along only
because he wanted to, but everyone knew that he
was there in case an accident happened.
That, however, was one thing about which no
body wanted to talk. The choice of men had been
made without any mention of the real reasons be
hind it. And even Holmes seemed to think that he
had brought along his black bag because he didn't
know what else to do with it.
Charlie drove the machine out of the big airlock,
and Dick watched the people clustered around. He
was lucky, he guessed. At least he would see what
went on. But they wouldn't know until the party
returned. The radio probably wouldn't have been
able to cover the hundred miles, even if both sets
at the ship and in the dome bad been working.
Johnny carne out and sailed around them a few
times. Dick had begun to think he could recognize
the pattern on Johnny's glowing form. But he
72 SaHie on Mercury
seemed to have wispy business of his own to at

tend to, and didn't try to follow them or to lead
them. By now the path was well enough worn
that he couldn't have helped, in any event.
Snaith had never seen the ship, and no amount
of telling about it could have given him a clear
picture. When they came within sight, his first re
action was one of surprise that it seemed so normal.
He must have expected to see bits of its hull strewn
over the ground all around. But then he began to
realize that the outward harm was a minor thing,
and that the real trouble lay inside.
"It-it seems to be bent," he said.
Rogers nodded. "Maybe it is. I thought that the
main girder down the center looked a little warped.
But not much. What you see is just the way the
hull back there is buckled up. It's a good thing
there's no air here to need streamlining, because
she's not fixed for that."
The nearer they came, the more Snaith's face
fell. The ship had buried itself quite a ways into
the hard surface, and at first glance it seemed that
the big rocket would never work in the position in
which it lay. None of them were sure that it would.
Once inside the ship, though, Snaith did another
change toward some measure of confidence. Dick
suddenly warmed a little to him, realizing the great
responsibility that lay on his shoulders. It wasn't
Crack-Up 73
as if the man were a real native of Sigma dome or

of Mercury. Up until three years ago, he'd had his
own business on Earth. Then a small depression
had ruined that-or so he claimed, though most of
the people in the dome suspected it was his rather
unpleasant manners.
But he hadn't questioned their decision to send
him. It was partly a matter of saving himself, as
well, of course; the only hope he had was to have

the rocket reach East Twilight. But for once he
seemed to have accepted the community decision
as being automatically right.
It couldn't be pleasant to carry the life and death
of seven hundred people on one's shoulders. in such
a hastily and badly patched rocket as this, Dick
knew.
"Better show me all the controls," Snaith sug
gested to him. "Let me see how they work. Might
help a little in getting the feeling of things. Then
give me half an hour to go through the motions."
It probably did no good, but Dick took him
around, showing exactly what was important, and
how the controls worked. He started to go out,
then, and leave Snaith alone. But the man called
him back.
"'Rather have someone around. And you have a
feel for machines-! have to admit that. I'm what
they tum out in schools, but you've got it so deep
in you that you don't need schools. You might spot

something that looks wrong."
"I could have used some more formal schooling,"
Dick said. If Snaith wanted to be friendly, now
would be a bad time to fail to return it. "I wanted
to go back to a university and study engineering,
but they wouldn't clear me in North Twilight-said
rd be better off staying here."
Snaith snorted, feeling the controls carefully.
"Must have been four years ago, then, when Full
mark was governor. His boy got the chance to go
back-and then flunked out. Fullmark got himself
known as a crook even on Earth."
"It was Fullmark," Dick admitted, and there was
still bitterness in his voice as he thought of the
days of waiting, only to find that he had been
flunked without even knowing what his marks on
the annual test were. "But I was too old the next
year."
Snaith dropped the subject at that point for a
moment, and then frowned. He hesitated, cleared
his throat, and then looked up. "Yeah. Well, you'll
find a whole set of books in my place-brought
them along because I never felt too sure about
myself. They were meant to be a teach-yourself
course, and they're as good as you can get outside
of a university. If I don't come back, you tell my
Crack-Up 75
wife they're yours. If I do make it, you can borrow

them whenever you want them."
Dick gulped out a confused thanks, which the
other took without really listening. If he didn't
come back, Dick thought, it wouldn't do any good
to have the books. You couldn't learn much in two
weeks. But if the rocket carried him through, a
chance to study out of modem books was more than
he'd ever hoped for.
He quit thinking about the matter then, and
tried to help Snaith work out all the possible maneu
vers on the controls, feeling the ship in his head
as best he could. It should have helped a little,
since he caught several bad moves, though Snaith
seemed to be doing a good job of pretending, on
the whole.
Finally he stuck out a hand awkwardly, and the
other took it. There wasn't much sense in saying
good-by, since Snaith would be back in a couple of
hours-or good-bys would be permanent, probably.
Dick went out, and the lock of the rocket closed
behind him. The men got into the tractor and drove
it out of the way of the big tube's blast.
Snaith began as Charlie had suggested. A spurt
of hot gasses came from under the ship, to show
that the steering rocket was there, and then from
the rear as the big tube warmed up. He let it run
76 BoHle on Mercury
for a minute, and then must have turned full power

into the little steering jet.
Small as the jet was, it held more power than
would have been thought. It couldn't lift the ship,
but it did make it tremble and seem about to rise.
Finally there was a long blast from the rear. The
ship seemed to hesitate. It began to slide forward,
with the nose tilting up slowly as the steering rocket
lifted it. It picked up speed. Then, with a savage
blast of superhot gasses, it was jumping forward and
up, twisting as it lifted.
It swung in a great arc, heading steadily more
toward the vertical. It kept going that way, while
a groan came from Charli� and Rogers.
Snaith hadn't cut it off in time. Then the steering
rocket stopped, and the opposite side shot out a
gout of flame. It tipped the little rocket nose back
to vertical, but again he had overshot.
Wobbling and lifting in spurts, the ship began
to climb. Snaith must have been dying a thousand
deaths inside, but he was improving. The ship went
upward, and now began to turn carefully toward
East Twilight. It was picking up speed steadily.
"Looks as if he'll make it," Charlie said. "He . . ...
But he never finished. The rocket seemed to
stumble in a sudden blind confusion. It tilted up
ward, and back down again. It jerked sideways,
and then wobbled uncertainly.
Crock-Up n
"The fool," Dr. Holmes cried beside Dick.

Rogers shook his head sharply. "No-not Snaith's
fault. Ifs the fuel-it isn't feeding evenly. Something
clogged or impurities in it. I knew it was a risk-I
knew it-but I didn't know how to test it . . . Right!
Now up! No, no!"
It was too late then, however. The ship had
twisted downward in one of its wild spurts. It was
perhaps two miles away, but the country was Hat,
and they could follow it all the way as it tumbled
down. Snaith had cut off his steering jet, and given
himself a chance to get organized. But he had
almost no time. At the last moment he jerked
the nose up, and managed to get some of the
force of the big tube directed downward.
But there wasn't time to recover.
The rocket hit, throwing up clouds of mixed
gasses and dust from the ground. It seemed to
sag. Somehow, in spite of the hard fall, Snaith had
almost made a tail landing. But not quite. The ship
suddenly bent over, and came down, this time on
its side. It bounced, hit again, bounced feebly, and
lay still.
"He got the blast off," Rogers said. "There may
be a chance. Come onl"
The big blast had been cut after the first land
ing, showing that Snaith had been still alive. But
it might have been a dying motion, or the second
hit as it turned sideways might have finished what

the first shock had only begun.
Charlie was urging the tractor over the ground
at its top speed, bouncing along, leaping wildly
when they hit a small boulder, but no longer worry
ing about the treads. They were at the rocket in
less than two minutes. Rogers and Dr. Holmes
were already through the airlock and clinging
grimly to the little outside rail. Dick jumped after
them as they slewed to a stop, and was beside
them as they dashed through the airlock, which
had been ripped open in the crash.
Snaith lay on his side, crumpled around the
pilot's chair. His legs were bent into a position
totally impossible for any normal legs, and one of
his arms seemed to be in the wrong position.
Holmes watched. "Breathing. Must have caught
the first shock on his legs, braced himself with his
arm for the second."
There was nothing they could do there. Holmes
dashed back to the tractor, while Dick and his
father picked up Snaith and moved along carefully,
trying not to shake the man too badly. Inside the
little tractor, they began pulling him out of his suit.
The legs looked horrible, and one side of his body
was a mass of bruises. But Holmes grew somewhat
more cheedul as he saw the man pulled from the
suit.
Crack-Up 79
He made a careful examination as quickly as

he could. Then he reached into his bag and came
out with a hypo, which he injected. «Not too bad.
I think there is no serious internal injury, and his
head escaped damage. If I'm right, he'll be all right
in six weeks, once the bones knit. Right now, about
all I can do is put him out of pain with this."
Charlie cased the tractor into motion, trying not
to jar the injured man. But Snaith looked up. His
eyes rested on Rogers. "Sorry," he said thickly.
«Sorry. Guess I let you down. Guess . . . "
He passed out again before he could finish, or

before Rogers could assure him that it hadn't been
his fault.
They rode back as slowly as they could, though
the drug kept Snaith from feeling anything from
the moment he lost consciousness again. Charlie
clung to the wheel, staring at the road he was
following.
"Never liked that guy," he said at last. "Just
proves a man never gets too old to be a fool. Never
saw any pilot could of done better'n he done.
,
Hey.,
Dick looked out where his finger was pointing,
and frowned. Along one of the ridges to the left
a thin strip of blue fire seemed to run. It leaped
up, and bounced back, to run on further.
"Another spook?" Dick asked.
"No," Rogers told him. "No, and I wish it were.

Though that may be the way the spooks got started,
from something like that that just accidentally hit
on a pattern that had some degree of life. No,
that's just radiation from the sun hitting hard
enough to break away free electrons from the rock
and maybe it has some electrons in it that are
shot here all the way from the sun. That's the way
a storm starts out, when it is really going to be
a storm."
"Worst I ever saw, with the spots up there no
further around old Sol's face," Charlie said. "Right
now, I'd even like to be a-heading back for Earth.
You betchat"
Dick watched the fire flicker over the ridge again.
From somewhere, one of the ball lightning things
shot into view, and streaked down towru:d the
dancing Harne. It moved back and forth, apparently
sucking up the energy that was being released.
Those creatures were meant to live on Mercury,
Dick realized. To them, the worst the sun could do
was only a chance for more food.
Men were foolish to try to compete with them
here!
eltapfCf 7 A Map from Johnny
lHE DOME had known by the way the tractor

was moving that things had gone wrong, and
they drove into a crowd that was completely
silent. Almost instantly, those ahead drew out of
the way, giving them room to drive on to Dr.
Holmes's place.
Dick had seen enough, and he had no desire
to witness the setting of the bones that began at
once. His father and Charlie finally came out, with
the doctor behind them.
81
S2 Battle on Mercury
"Let me know if you ever want to be a nurse;·

the doctor was telling Charlie. "I could use you:·
"Not me;· Charlie denied. "Out there when I
was young, we used to have to do things ourselves.
Set my own leg once-and I did a good job of it.
But I don't like it, and I never will like it:•
"How is he?" Dick asked his father.
Rogers tried to smile. "He'll he all right. Doc
says he'll live as long as any of us. He's shaken
up, and those bones are pretty bad, but they'll all
heal, if given time."
He didn't mention that there wouldn't be time,
and Dick let it drop. It was easier not to put it
into words. It was pleasanter to pretend that every
thing was going to be normal, and that their last
hope of living beyond the end of their power hadn't
just failed.
Neither he nor his father wanted to go home
at once. They knew that Dick's mother would take
it without flinching, but somehow, that only made
it worse. "Should have stayed on Earth, I guess,"
Rogers said somberly. "This coming here was all
my fault."
There was nothing Dick could say to that. They
moved along the little street toward the big port,
and then began to tum back, no longer able to put
off what must be done.
Then a commotion at the gate caught their at-
A Mop from Johnny 83
tention, and they swung back. The old watchman

was still there, and he was struggling violently with
another of the men-one of the miners who had
gone out with them to repair the ship. It didn't
take much to spot the cause. Hanging just in front
of the port, as if trying to come in, was the round
ball shape of Johnny Quicksilver.
The younger man finally wrested the blaster
away from the watchman. "I told you not to shoot,"
he said hotly. "Doggone, right now it won't matter
if the thing does ruin the dome. And if Charlie
and young Dick want the thing left alive, you
aren't going to kill it! After what they've done,
they have some rights around here!"
"Thanks," Dick told him. He'd been one of those
who had wanted to shoot Johnny from the sled,
but he seemed to have switched sides. Then Dick
turned to the port, where the metal screen had
been shoved aside for the watchman to look out.
"Come on in, Johnny, if you want to. But I warn
you, somebody's going to take a shot at you. You're
not going to be popular with everybody."
The wispy moved up to the transparent plastic,
seeming to test it for the presence of metal. Then,
finding that some of it was unshielded, he shrank
to a small sphere, and came through it, landing
in the air near Dick's face.
"Better keep him in your room, if you want
him," Rogers said. "But he can't have any power,

and he's going to get pretty hungry here away
from the sun."
"You'd better go back, Johnny," Dick told him.
He'd forgotten for the moment that the energy
from the sun was necessary to Johnny's life. "Go
on, scram."
The creature paid no attention. It began moving
about carefully, looking into this and that as it
went. Dick didn't lmow whether it could really see
or not, but it must have had some way of sensing
things. It moved on down the street while he tried
to keep up with it. Then it shot toward the entrance
of the central store, where all the usual needs of
the people were handed out.
The storekeeper was slowly reaching for his
blaster when Dick and his father caught up, but
he made no strong protest at their orders to let
Johnny alone. He watched the wispy with sus
picious eyes, but made no comment.
Johnny settled down then, coming into position
over a small tablet of thin plastic sheets that the
children used in school for drawing. He hung there,
and then seemed to strain himself. The sheet moved
very slightly upward, probably drawn by electro
static force, just as a hair is drawn to a comb that
has been rubbed with wool.
Dick tried picking up several of the sheets, and
A Mop from Johnny 85
Johnny bobbed up and down quickly, as he some

times did to indicate that was right. While Rogers
signed for the tablet, Dick spread out one of the
sheets on the counter.
Johnny dropped downward at once, and a tiny
stream of sparks began to come out of him, run
ning against the plastic and into the counter below.
The plastic smoked and began to melt where they
touched, but the sparks came in such a thin stream
that they left only lines on the sheet, not harming
most of it.
Then, as if realizing that he was risking too much
by sticking around, Johnny suddenly pulled him
self back into his smallest form and shot down the
street like a bullet. The old watchman was just
starting to close the metal sheet over the plastic
window in the port when Johnny hit the clear
section and was gone.
"Makes no sense to me," Rogers said. "I thought
he was supposed to be intelligent."
"Anything that can draw a map is intelligent,"
Dick said quietly. He handed over the sheet he
had been examining.
Rogers looked at him strangely, and then at the
sheet with the odd little lines and rough spots all
over it. "Does look a little like a map," he admitted.
Then he turned as Charlie entered the store, ob
viously following them. "Hey, Charlie, take a look
86 BoHle on Mercury
at this. Dick thinks it's a map Johnny has drawn

for him."
Charlie studied it slowly. "Sure could be. And
could be just nonsense. rd have to study this a
mite more. Dunno what good a map would do,
though."
"None," Rogers said. "Johnny has probably seen
men writing, and he thinks it has some value to
them. So he came in here and made marks about
something. But we can't tell what it really is about."
..Could be you're right," Charlie said. But he
motioned Dick to fall back with him. "And could
be your father is wrong, Dick. You hang onto that
until we can get together in your room. Maybe I
can make something of it."
In the room, though, Charlie had a hard time of
it. He turned it and twisted it about, trying to see
it from different angles. He shook his head, and
then stopped. "Now . . . hmm . . . it'd be about
there, at that. Wait a minute."
He yanked down the map of Mercury that Dick
had been using, and began marking on it, using a
pencil that had twelve different colored leads in
it. When he finished, he compared the two.
"It's a map, all right." He nodded positively.
"Only Johnny ain't seen much of maps. He's put
it down by the way the ores and metals are put
on the surface; reckon he figgers since we're all
A Map from Johnny 87
the time hunting metals, that's what we'll recog

nize. See, the big lead lake, then Big Lead River,
and over here copper. Deeper he dug into the
sheet, heavier the metal. Say, that's right smart
when you think of it! Yep. And I know what it is.
Ifs a map of how we can get to Twilight-not East
Twilight, but the last Relay Station. Never thought
of that, but it's nearer."
Dick gasped. He'd forgotten the Relay Station,
too. It had been set up originally as a link between
East Twilight and North Twilight, but with the
coming of more powerful radios it had been aban
doned. Then, because it had to be justified as long
as it was up, they'd fixed it so that it would serve
for a group of scientists who had wanted to study
the silicone life that wandered along the Twilight
Zone.
"We could reach that, and send a signal right
into East Twilight, or get a lift from some of the
scientists," he said. "Charlie, can it be done?"
The old man frowned. "If I was twenty, I'd do
it for you, boy. But I dunno. I'm getting old. Maybe
some of the young blades here might take the
tractor, though."
They went down to hunt up Rogers, and show it
to him. But he shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I
can't go along. It isn't exact; you admit it's only
a rough map. And there are ore deposits all over
88 8aHie on Mercury
Mercury. No wonder you found something to it

it's like a man looking at clouds on Earth and
seeing animals in them. I couldn't send a man out
in a worn-out tractor on a trip like that, even if
it was ten times as plain a map. Dick, face it
Johnny's done some clever things, but that doesn't
mean everything he does has a purpose we can
understand."
"But . . ." Dick began.
Rogers shook his head firmly. "No. And I don't
want any more talk about it, Dick. If I thought
there was any chance you were right, I'd be in
that tractor myself. But we can't go on believing
in fairies-and that's what this amounts to."
The old man and Dick went back to Dick's
room. Dick took the map and again compared it.
..You're sure you marked out the metal deposits
right on this, Uncle Charlie?"
"After over forty years out there, you think
I wouldn't know 'em better'n the back of my hand?
You betcha they're right, Dick"
Dick picked up the sheet and compared it again.
"Then Dad's wrong, Charlie. And even if he might
be right, we can't tum this down. We don't know
a good way to the Relay Station-but Johnny has
it marked down. With seven hundred people maybe
dying here, we can't tum this down!"
"Blamed right we can't," the old man agreed.

..And don't you worry. I don't have to take orders
from Bart Rogers-I'm a free prospector, my own
boss. And out there a-waiting is my own tractor.
Hot-lead, I may be old, but I ain't that old. Don't
you worry, I'll make it."
"We'll make it," Dick corrected him. 'Tve got
something we need, too. I've got a chance to get
help from Johnny, and I've got a robot, which
might be handy."
"Would be," Charlie admitted. "Too bad I can't
take you, son, but I ain't kidnaping you, and that's
what they'd accuse me of. Besides, I've been
a-wandering out there most of my life, and you're
a dome boy. You stay here, like your father or
dered you."
Dick thought it over, studying the old man, and
seeing that he was serious . ..You need supplies, I
suppose?" he asked at last.
"Sure, I'll have to stock up right smart. Say,
111 bet he would! I'll bet Bart would tell me I
couldn't have any, at that. He's got enough food
and air, but he'd say no, sure as shooting. And I
got enough power, so I wouldn't have to ask for
that, but I can't live without air."
"Then I've got something you need," Dick
pointed out. "I happen to know what the com-
90 BoHle on Mercury
bination to the mining store is, and there's plenty

of air stored in there-and concentrated food, too.
Even some fair stuff for traveling out into the
hotlands."
"Good. Good. Only you aren't going to start . "
"No," Dick told him quietly. "I'm not going to
start anything. I'm finishing it. Either we both go
on this trip, or you can stay here with me. We'll
have double the chance going together, and you
know it."
"'I could tell your father I'd make sure you
stayed here iHen he'd supply me with stuff,''
Charlie said, but he wasn't sure of himself now.
Dick shook his head. "He'd tell you he intended
to make sure both of us stayed. And once you
tipped him off that we'd done any more plotting
about this, he would, too."
For a second Charlie glowered at Dick. Then
his face began to crease into a leathery smile.
Finally his lips parted, and he began to rock back
and forth, laughing silently, but with more gusto
than Dick had seen since the trouble began.
At last, when he had quieted, he turned to the
boy. "Doggone you, Dick, if you'd been born
forty years ago, rd of made the best miner of you
that ever walked this here planet. Yes, sir. A crook,
a swindler, a blackmailer-you're as twisted inside
as a frog's stomach. And you're straight, too. Yes,
A Map lrom Johnny 91
sir. When it comes down to it, you see straight,

and you get straight to the point. Partner, we·re
going to reach that Relay Station, or we'll both die
trying. And I don't think we're the kind that dies.
Shake."
"You mean I can go?" Dick asked, as he took
the other's hand . ..You're not trying to fool roe?"
"Word of honor. When I shake a man's hand, I
don•t lie to him. That's rule one. It only takes a
small lie out there to kill a man, so tell the truth
about business. And lie like fury when you tell a
tall story for fun, just to get all the lies out of
your system. It don•t hurt then, because nobody
but a fool is going to believe you. What's the com
bination?"
Dick hesitated, and then nodded. Charlie could
go out and get the stuff with nobody thinking
anything about it. If they saw him going into the
mine store, they'd think that Dick's father had
told him the combination, and that he was going
out in his tractor. But if Dick went along, it would
cause suspicion at once.
He told his story quickly. «And where11 I meet
you, Uncle Charlie?"
«Just Charlie, now, partner. When we go out
that port, you're a man-else I wouldn't have you
with me. And men don•t go around saying 'uncle.'
Or don't you kids use those words any more?"
Dick nodded. He'd caught the pun. "Okay,

Charlie, but where do we meet?"
"Outside, of course. If I go out, no questions
are asked. If you take a trip out with your robot,
they figure that's fine. But if we both go together
without your father, they'll notice it. So we go out
to that little valley on the way to where you found
me, then we start for Relay Station."
It made sense to Dick, and he nodded. But
it wasn't until Charlie had gone out toward the
tractor that it began to seem real. Dick looked
around at his room and tried to imagine what his
mother would think when she found it empty in
the morning. He could hear his father trying to
comfort her, and see his lips tighten at the defiance
Dick was going to show for his orders. He'd never
given many orders as a father, but he was the
city chairman here, and this was an official order
Dick was breaking.
Then he sighed to himself, and sat down to
write the best note he could. Ellen came in and
stayed for a while. But this time he didn't get
mad. He found his best mechanical pencil and
gave it to her. She acted suspicious for a moment,
then suddenly kissed him on the cheek and ran
out to try it on all the places where she had no
right to write.
Sometimes, Dick told himself, orders had to be
disobeyed. And he hoped that his father would

understand. He was sure that Rogers would have
done exactly as he was doing, if he'd had the same
decision to make.
Anyway, either he succeeded, in which case it
didn't matter what everybody thought, as long
as he could save them; or else he'd fail, and it
wouldn't matter to anyone very long. Two weeks
wasn't much time for anything.
eltapfCf s Into the Hollands
lHE sUN was plainly kicking up worse than ever

when Dick came out, just before what would
normally be breakfast. He'd known enough to
get a good night's sleep before starting, partly for
his own good, and partly because there would be
less suspicion at the port if he left during the day.
Pete followed along like the mechanical gadget
he was, having no feelings about anything, but
obeying because he was built that way. They
94
Into the Hotlands 95
reached the port, and the guard there threw it

open without question.
Dick turned up the trail they had made with the
tractor, and began slogging along at a slow trot,
the robot keeping up easily. If Charlie had waited
for him, they should soon be moving along rapidly.
For a moment he began to be afraid that Charlie
might have gone on.
But common sense told him that Charlie would
have tipped off the guard, or done something else,
instead of letting him come out this far. He re
laxed, keeping to a pace that would not be too
tiring.
From somewhere, a wispy popped up ahead of
him. He reached for his blaster, and suddenly
realized he had left it hehind in his hurry! Then
Johnny bobbed about, indicating that it was the
right wispy, and he relaxed. Charlie would have
a pair of blasters, at least, and he certainly didn't
need arms against Johnny.
The spook hovered around Pete's head, and then
began to slide in. For a second, the robot went off
stride, as it failed to keep in step with the orders
Johnny must be giving it. Dick started to command
it to sleep, but apparently Johnny had remembered
the trick, and had thrown the relay. The robot
settled down to its former steady pace as Johnny
took up the job of guiding it.
He must enjoy it, Dick thought. Probably it was

a big toy to Johnny, and a complete novelty. The
wispies might be intelligent, but they had never had
any chance to control things before. They couldn't
hold or shape or control, because they were noth
ing but a ball of electricity, as unsolid as the thinnest
gas. And now, in the robot and touching the relays
to make it work, using tiny bits of power that were
automatically amplified, the wispy could do most
of the things that men did.
It was as if a man found he could float around
and dart away at a thousand miles an hour, just by
thinking about it. It must have been a wholly new
sensation to the creature.
Now they came over the little group of rocks,
into the small valley, and Dick saw that the tractor
was waiting for him. He speeded up to a sprint,
and was on it a moment later, shoving through the
little airlock. Johnny started to follow, and changed
his mind. He ran around the tractor and took his
place ahead of it.
"Forgot my blaster, but everything else is okay:'
Dick reported. "I'd like to borrow one from you,
Charlie."
Charlie snorted. "Never carried one, and never
will, Dick, except when I'm around people. With
one of those, you only get yourself into scrapes
you'd have sense enough to stay out of, otherwise.
Info the Hotloncls
Forget it, and take over here. You'd better get the
feel of driving this while the going is good."
Dick had meant to suggest the idea, and he
slipped behind the seat quickly and shoved it back.
He could have used it as it was, but he'd seen his
father readjust it, and he knew that his longer legs
would make him more comfortable that way. Then
he slipped in, dropping his feet on the two pedals
that worked the brakes on the tracks, slowing or
turning it according to the way they were used. His
hands settled over the wheel that gave him some
control, by changing the angle of the tracks, and
he started off slowly.
At first the number of controls puzzled him, but
he had a good instinct for any machine, and this
was no great problem. He spotted the robot run
ning ahead, and set out for it.
"Johnny knows how to pick a trail," Charlie ad
mitted. "He can almost think like a man, when he
uies. And if you don't think that's tough for some
thing built like him, you should try to think like
him sometime. But when you get better control,
you'd better get the robot inside. Pete -isn't built to
keep up with this here tractor."
Less than half an hour later the robot seemed
to jerk to a stop, and the glow that was Johnny shot
out from it. For a second the robot hesitated, then
sprang up to the tractor and fixed itself onto the
98 BaH/e on Mercury
rail behind. Somehow, Johnny had been able to

leave orders before he pulled out, it seemed.
After that, they made good time. Dick could see
how the old tractor had come to be almost a part
of Charlie. Riding in it had been dull, compared to
driving it. The complicated controls made it almost
as responsive as a man,s hands.
Dick glanced at the clock on the dashboard and
realized that by now his family must know. But it
was too late for regret or turning back, and he
shifted his eyes back to where Johnny was hunting
the way through a group of boulders.
Old Hotside Charlie took over after a while, and
stepped it up. Dick noticed now that Jolmny shifted
almost at once, no longer seeming to hunt so care
fully. He seemed to leave the little details to
Charlie, and only set the broad pattern of their
trip. It wasn't exactly complimentary, when Dick
had felt he was driving so well, but it indicated that
Johnny was constantly aware of the situation, with
whatever senses he had in place of eyes working
perfectly.
Once or twice he darted aside to leap onto a bit
of blue fire that sprang up from the rocks, but he
only nibbled at it quickly, rather than trying to
absorb it all, and jumped back to the breaking
of the trail.
Into the Hotlonds 99
By afternoon, Charlie was nodding to himself.

"Been a fool forty years, Dick," he said. "I should
have kept that first wispy I hit it off with. I'd have
been a rich man by now. Bet they can even find
ores, from that map he drew. Hey, Johnny." He
spoke into the microphone that was mounted on
the wheel. "Know where there is any platinum
around here?"
Johnny came back quickly, and made a quick
zigzag to the left, then darted back. He spun him
self half around and back again several times, and
began leading them on.
"Like a man shaking his head," Charlie muttered.
"Bet he's meaning the same thing. Knows where it
is, but either too deep or not enough of it. All the
same, wish I'd made friends with that first wispy."
He slid from the seat, and nodded to Dick, who
took over. This time Johnny did less of the careful
picking of the course, as if willing to give Dick his
head. Charlie pulled out a rubber air cushion, blew
it up, and stretched out on it.
"Better get some sleep," he said. uyou drive on
about six hours, then I'll take over while you sleep.
We got a long ways to go."
Dick nodded, and began figuring out how far.
They had been located almost at the center of the
hotlands. Mercury was 3,100 miles in diameter, a
little less than 10,000 in circumference. And it was

one-quarter of that from the center of the hotlands
to the Twilight Zone, where the wobbling of the
little planet gave a sort of long night and day.
That would make a trip of nearly twenty-five hun
dred miles. They'd need to make all the speed they
could.
Then he was sorry that he had bothered to figure
it out! It was longer that way tl1an it had been
when it was just a journey. He started to divide it
into days of travel, and gave up. There was no way
to figure it. On good terrain they could make a
thousand miles in a day, but that was only by figur
ing a whole day of smooth traveling. They'd be
lucky, actually, to do a third of that if he had to
do all the driving, and even Charlie probably
couldn't count on more than six hundred in a good
period of twenty-four hours.
The tractor grumbled and groaned, and the old
electric motor that drove it from the atomic boiler
and generator whined unhappily. It was an old
tractor, and it had broken down and been patched
up hastily. It could break down again and leave
them stranded in the middle of nowhere, to try the
impossible trek on foot.
Dick tried to push it from his mind. Ahead of
them, a wispy came floating along, and drew close
Info the Hotlands 101
to Johnny. For a second they seemed to be in com

munication. Then Johnny abruptly changed course,
and began heading east of the route he had marked
on the plastic map.
The other wispy sailed off again, to return-or
for one exactly like it to return-in another fifteen
minutes. This time the conversation was longer.
Johnny bore west this time, taking them back to
the trail he had marked.
The fire along the edges of the rocks was
stronger now. And with it, there seemed to come
more of the wispies. But Johnny avoided these
when they came near them, dropping back to the
tractor, and once retreating quickly into the shell
of Pete and doing his guiding in the robot for
almost half an hour.
Then the things became less common, and he
sailed back to his usual position.
Charlie took over, and Dick dropped onto the
mattress. On that, the tractor motion was a sooth
ing thing that put him to sleep almost at once. He
felt good when he awoke, almost ready to believe
that they would have no trouble on the long trip.
Another day passed, and Charlie was glowing
happily at the progress they had made. He was
already a day ahead of the schedule he had figured
for himself.
102 BaHie on Mercury
"All the little demons are out," he told Dick

toward the end of the day, just before Dick pre
pared to sleep. "And I reckon the little wispies,
too. You don't see the small ones much, unless
there's a touch of storm. They stay way up at the
real center of the hotlands. See there-a little yel
lower than Johnny? I don't swear it's a young one,
but I kind of figure I'm right about it."
«How come they don't attack us?" Dick wanted
to know. He'd been puzzling over that for hours.
"You don't have a full coating of aluminum on
your dome here-you have to keep the front and
rear clear. And you've got electricity in the tractor.
rd think they'd come running for it."
Charlie chuckled. "Nope. I found out a long time
ago that they don't like some things. One of them's
a real long wave length of radio stuff-about two
hundred kilocycles to you-kilocycles, not the mega
cycles we have; that used to be called high fre
quency stuff in the old days. So I got me a little
transmitter built in. Been trying to get some of the
domes to try it for years, but they think I'm crazy.
That's why Jolmny stays away from the tank, ex
cept when one of the demons is around. Then he
decides he likes that better than demons. Don't
think it hurts them-more like a bad smell. Hey,
you better get some sleep."
Into the Hotlonds 103
Charlie was looking worried when Dick awoke

on the morning of the third day, and it wasn't
hard to tell why. There was a bumping sound
mixed with the other noises of the tractor, and a
faint jarring mixed with the feel of its motion.
Charlie was going slower.
Dick started to take the controls, but the old
man pushed him away. "No, I'd better keep her.
Had the same thing happen before. Might just
keep going till we hit Twilight, and might pop off
any minute. If she goes, we'd better be set to work
like beavers."
"What is it?" Dick asked. "One of the wheels
the tracks run on?"
1lle old man looked at him with suddenly re
newed respect. "That's it-got a gear missing, must
have broke ofi back there in the last bad spot. If
it was just the one gear tooth, it11 be rough, but
we'll keep going. And if it's a weakened wheel,
and other teeth go-well, you better do a little
praying. It sure isn't any fun trying to weld them
things back."
The next hour was one of worry, but the gear
seemed to be holding up, if not exactly smoothly.
Charlie had just begun to relax when there was a
wrenching, and the tractor suddenly spun around,
one track frozen and the other twisting the whole
machine around.
104 BatJie on Mercury
The old man cut power and applied the brake

to the other track almost at once, bringing it to a
halt. For a second he sat there quietly. Then he
reached out and picked up his suit.
"We're going to have to look for the pieces, I
betcha," he said sourly. "The way that went, it
probably sprayed itself in six hunks. And if there's
one thing I'd hate worse'n having to weld on
teeth, it's having to build up and cut out a new
wheel from scrap."
They climbed down and inspected the machine.
Charlie was right. The gear had broken completely,
and was missing. It had left only the bearing on
which it turned.
"Could be quite a ways back," Charlie said.
"When they pop out, sometimes the momentum of
the track holds it up for a while. Felt like that
this time.''
They began searching, while Johnny drew closer
to the tractor and seemed to watch them unhappily.
By the time they had gone back a hundred feet,
Dick began to abandon hope, but Charlie kept on,
looking from side to side. Dick shook his head
and followed the older man's example.
Suddenly Charlie moved forward quickly, and
scooped up something from the hot ground. It was
almost half of a gear wheel, broken across the
Into the Hollands 105
bearing. "Yep. See. Right here is where that tooth

broke off-weakened the gear at the same time.
Wel1, if we find the rest, we may get it fixed."
Dick went on searching, and it was his turn
Almost straight ahead of him lay the other part,
driven into the ground.
He pried it out, and they fitted the two parts
together. It was going to be a tough job, but
barely within the limits of the little welder the
tractor carried. And building up a single tooth
wouldn't be impossible.
"We'll substitute it for another one, back where
the strain is less," Dick suggested. "I noticed one
the same size that won't carry much stress, most
of the time. That way, it should stand up."
He turned back to the tractor, just as Johnny
came swooping down at him. "Okay, Johnny," he
began. "We found . . . "
"Dick!" It was a scream in his earphones, and

the old man's voice was desperate. "Duck! That
ain't Johnny. It's a demon! "
Something hit Dick across the back then, and
he went down in a sprawl, while one of the old
man's hands began clawing over him, hunting for
metal in the ground that could make the metal of
the suit a ground for the electricity in the demon.
They seemed to have picked the worst possible
106 BoHle on Mercury
spot for it, though. There was no sign of metal, and

the rock they were on was enough insulation for
the creature. It hovered over them, as if gloating.
Before they could roll toward other spots, it began
to swoop down.
At the same time, another ball of lightning
darted toward them.
ekapfCf 9 Stranded
lHE SECOND BALL of blue light came glancing in,
and something about it was suddenly familiar.
"Johnny!" Dick cried. At the same time he heard
Charlie,s voice echo his words. Johnny came in
low and fast, with none of his usual fooling around.
Static suddenly burst in their phones as they be
gan to try to get up. Dick found his feet first, and
helped to pull Charlie up. He realized now that
all that had saved them before was the presence
1 07
of the tiny little transmitter in the tractor, and

that the only safe place was back beside it.
But now, above them, an obvious battle was go
ing on. Johnny had come in before the other had
spotted him, and had gotten in what seemed to be
a single stroke-a hissling pop of electricity. Now
he was moving back, as if trying to lead the demon
away from the two men.
They backed toward the tractor, watching the
battle going on. They had no way of knowing whiCh
was a telling blow and which was only wasted
effort. At first it seemed that Johnny was winning,
since the other creature was being led away. Then
it seemed less certain. Twice Johnny had ducked,
and twice the other had seemed to make a point.
The demon was bigger than Johnny, and even
bluer, which would indicate that he was in fairly
compact form. It wasn't too surprising that he might
be stronger, since he'd probably spent his time
feeding on the fire along the rocks, while Johnny
had been wasting his energy leading them.
Now there could be no question about it. Johnny
was losing. He was taking the evasive action, while
the demon was plunging in. And Johnny was shrink
ing, without growing brighter. What energy he had
was obviously being sucked out of him.
He swooped back for the tractor now. But the
other no longer seemed to avoid the field of the little
Stranded 109
transmitter; if it was like a stench to the demon,

it was a stench that could be tolerated when more
urgent business called the creature to draw close.
Johnny swooped around the tractor twice, duck
ing each time. Then he drew himself down to his
smallest size and made a sudden dart for the robot.
Pete had been standing motionlessly. Now he erupted
into action. He picked up the metal shovel that
had been fastened to the back of the tractor and
jumped to the ground, running rapidly toward the
demon.
In his hand he brandished the metal tool. His
actions were not quite smooth, as if he were trying
too hard to control the robot. But his intentions
were plain enough. He'd met his match at the
purely electrical form of battle they knew, but he
had picked up new abilities, and he intended to
try them out.
..He1l lose," Charlie said roughly. ..He ain't fa
miliar enough with it, and he's forgot how slow
that robot is compared to himself. By golly, now I
wish I had brought a blaster. I'd plumb enjoy see
ing that thing frizzle. Hey, wait a minute."
But Dick had already figured it out, and was up
on the tractor before him. He ripped out a section
of wiring with a savage jerk, and bounded down,
handing one strand to the old man and taking the
other himself. \Vith long leaps, he began moving
out to where Johnny was taking his stand. Dick

was stripping off the insulation as he went, and
Charlie was right at his heels.
The demon was apparently willing to take on all
contenders. It darted in toward the robot, and away
doubtfully as Johnny managed to get Pete's arms
up with the shovel. Then it touched the metal of
the shovel in a quick brush, and drew back. It had
found that the metal wasn't grounded, and it was
no longer afraid of this strange metamorphosis of
its enemy.
Dick let out a scream as it darted down. But
Johnny had also seen the error of his attempt. He
snapped out of Pete at once, leaving the robot to
slump quickly. The demon hesitated again, appar�
ently puzzled by this constant change of form of
Johnny.
Then Dick and Charlie were on the scene. Dick
tossed the wire down onto the only outcropping of
metal ore he could see, and stepped on it, forcing
it down and kicking a piece of rock over it. The
flexible wire coiled back over his head, its end bare,
though there was still insulation where he held it.
Charlie had taken a stand beside him, imitating
his actions.
"Get between us, Johnny," Dick cried. "Stick to
us, and don't try anything."
Stranclecl 111
Johnny hesitated as the demon seemed about to

swoop, but he had no choice but to obey. The
battle had gone out of his control. He slipped be
tween the two men, holding himself to a small,
tight ball of force.
The demon came swooping in, sure of itself at
last. It might have feared a pole of metal, but it
couldn't see anything menacing in the thin wires
that didn't even stick up into the air.
Charlie and Dick struck together. Dick suddenly
whipped his arms out and down, and the wire
snapped up over his head, describing a sharp arc.
There was a Hash from Charlie's wire at the same
time, while Johnny huddled closer to the ground,
but trusted them enough to remain.
Then a lance of fire lashed down the wire. It had
struck the demon dead center and formed a per
fect path to the ground. The electrons that gave the
creature life suddenly decided to go home to Mother
Mercury. They singed the insulation off the wire as
they passed, and Dick felt something like a ham
mer hitting his hands. But the wire carried most
of it, and his feet were on rock.
He caught himself before he fell and turned to
Charlie, but the old man was shaking his head. "I
was about a millionth of a second behind you, Dick,"
he admitted. "You got practically all of it. Dog-
gone, I'm sure a-getting old. Slowing up, turning to

dry rot. They'll be putting me out to pasture any
day now, I betcha."
Dick shook his hands, but was surprised to find
that he had not been hurt. It had been a shock,
but not one strong enough to injure him. "Hope
you've got more wire," he said.
Charlie nodded. "Plenty of this light stuff. Leave
it here. No good with the insulation like that, any-
how.,
Johnny moved ahead of them back to the tractor,
and then seemed to remember the robot. He went
back for it, and made sure it was in its proper
position and the shovel back in place before com
ing away again. Dick looked at him, worrying about
the loss of energy. But Johnny seemed less worried.
He moved outward, and began grazing about,
hunting for the fires that danced up from the
rocks. In a few minutes he seemed to be his old
self again.
"Johnny must like us, Charlie," Dick said. "He
could have stayed by the tractor and been safe.
But he came out all set to fight as soon as he saw
us in danger."
"I :figgered out he liked you a long time ago,"
Charlie told him. "Hadda like you, if he was will
ing to go through all these blamed demons, just to
see you got to where you wanted to go. He ain't a
Stranded 113
fool-he knew what he was getting into before he

ever drew that map. Now where in tarnation did
I put that box of welding rods? Oh, sure. Here."
The repair wasn't as bad as Dick had expected,
though it took the better part of another hour. They
couldn't be sure of it, of course-there was no way,
even, of knowing that there had been no other
Haws. But the repair seemed to be satisfactory, since
the tractor ran smoothly again.
It was growing cooler outside now. Lead was
solid most of the time. The sun had seemed to
drop in the sky, going further and further west as
they went east. And since the rays from it were
now at a slant, so that the full force couldn't hit,
the rocks were no longer over seven hundred de
grees in temperature. They were probably down
to less than five hundred, which was cool compared
with what Dick was used to.
Another day went by, and now Dick began to
have hopes. They were drawing close to Twilight,
when considered against the distance they had orig
inally had to come. And he began to think that an
other two days of travel would bring them there.
Then the tractor began to act up. There was a
smell of ozone, and a faint hissing that told of some
thing wrong with the motor.
They stopped the tractor, and Dick tossed back
the cover and began examining it. He straightened
1 1.4 BoHle on Mercury
up, with a relieved look on his face. "Just the

brushes worn down until the copper contact is be
ginning to hit," he told Charlie. "We'll be fine as
soon as we put in new brushes."
Charlie nodded reluctantly. "You mean iffen we
put 'em in, Dick. I ain't been back where I could
get them kind of supplies for quite a spell. I put in
my last set-the ones right in there-quite a spell
back. Well, we can always walk."
"Maybe not," Dick decided. "They used to make
brushes that were just that-tiny brushes of copper
before they got around to finding solid graphite
worked as well. We could try making some."
Charlie wasn't too sure of the idea-nor was Dick,
for that matter. But they dug up pieces of silicone
plastic and began boring tiny holes and pushing
staples made out of their smallest wire through
them. Finally, when the bristles were all in, they
trimmed them off and installed them.
For a little while, everything went on as if the
motor had just been shipped out from Earth. It
purred on sweetly, and the scorched plains of Mer
cury went sweeping by behind them. Then it began
to misbehave. The power fell off, though the meter
showed as great a drain as ever. Dick thought it
over, trying to see how the trouble could come. Sud
denly he sat up sharply, and grabbed for the switch.
Stranded 115
He was a few seconds too late. There was a

sudden hissing spit from the motor, and then it
went dead.
"It chewed off the wire, and the blower couldn't
get rid of it, the way it could blow out the graphite
dust. It must have gotten into the works and shorted
the whole thing," he told Charlie. "I guess I really
pulled a blooper."
"Got us further'n we'd have gone without it, I
reckon," Charlie said. "It ain't what I'd call a real
blooper. Got any other ideas?"
Dick considered disconnecting the motor com
pletely and trying to run a belt from the generator
back to the power take-off, but he couldn't see any
way to do it. And it would have been a makeshift
that might have lasted no more than minutes.
He gave up. "I guess we walk."
"Well," Charlie said slowly, "then we walk. And
I guess we can feel lucky we got this far. Anyhow,
it's about time we put that no-good robot of yours
to work Come on, let's get going."
They piled out, and began cutting off the dome
of the tank. Charlie's face looked as sad as if he'd
been cutting off his own leg, but it was his idea.
They had to have a sled to pull their supplies in,
and a section of the dome over the tractor would be
as nearly perfect a sled as they could get-provided
116 Battle o n Mercury
they didn't load it too heavy. The plastic was as

tough as metal, and considerably lighter.
Next they began sorting out what they could
take. The first requirement was for oxygen. Fortun
ately, the beryllium-steel bottles in which it came
were lighter and stronger than the steel monstrosities
the first men in space had carried. But it wasn't
easy to carry enough of the vital gas, even when
compressed to a liquid. After that they packed up
the tiny little batteries which would keep their suits
cooled and power Pete from now on. Dick frowned
at that. There hadn't been too many of the right
kind of batteries for that, even when they started
the journey.
Charlie threw in an air-tent-a thin plastic bag
that was big enough to hold a man while he crawled
in and loaded his suit with fresh supplies of food,
or was forced to take it off for any reason. And
finally, they loaded on a bare minimum of food and
enough water to make up for what the units in
their suits couldn't reclaim.
It was a sad load when they finished. There wasn't
enough of anything, and yet there was too much
of everything. It would make a heavy load for Pete.
As they went on, it would grow lighter, of course,
but it might grow so light that there would be
nothing left. They had no exact idea of how far
Stranded 1 17
from the beginnings of the twilight belt they were,

but they were certain it was a good deal further
than they liked.
Pete bent against the load obediently. It moved,
though it was obvious that it took nearly all his
strength.
Charlie went back and found more cord. With
that, he added two loops to the sled, stretching
ahead so that he and Dick could add their strength
to that of the robot.
The old man stood for a long minute, staring at
the wreck of his tractor. "Twenty years in the old
machine," he said slowly. "Traded my first one for
her. Well, maybe if we get where we want, I can
rent me another and come out for her. She's a good
tractor, Dick-better'n any they make nowadays.
And if fd treated her right and kept her fed, she'd
be taking us along as smooth as a clipper, right
this second."
Then he turned his back on the wreck, and bent
against the cord. The sled began to move behind
them, and Johnny went ahead, hovering slowly as
he began to try the difficult job of finding a trail
they could follow with the load.
"Well, here's where we make a real Mercury man
out of you, Dick," he said. "And I got a feeling
I'm going to hope I'm as good before we're through
1 18 Battle on Mercury
with this. I'm getting old, son-downright old and

useless. But we got work to do."
He set the pace, stepping along briskly in spite
of the load and the age he complained of.
Dick looked out over the landscape, and fear be
gan to gnaw at his stomach. Inside the tractor, or
within a few miles of his home dome, Mercury had
been nothing terrible, in spite of all the wild tales.
He'd grown up with it. But here, stranded and with
an unknown distance ahead of him, it was another
matter.
The hard, rough surface under his heavy feet
pounded back at him with every step. The blazing
sun beat down, still too hot for any living thing
except the wispies. And the cracks and pits ahead
became ravines and little hills and jagged rocks as
he reached them.
Dick had no idea as to how fast they could travel
now. Not as fast as with the tractor at its slowest,
he knew.
And from now on, they'd be traveling only half
the time. In the tractor, he and Charlie had taken
turns sleeping, and had kept going steadily. There
was no way to do that on foot. They'd have to hole
up somehow each night, and strike out only during
the hours they called day.
He tried counting his steps, but the number be
came meaningless. And finally he discovered what
Stranded 119
every prospector had said over and over, but what

everyone had had to learn for himself-that the best
way to keep going was just to keep going. Any trick
a man tried to make it seem like less distance only
called his attention to how much distance really was.
Dick stopped thinking after a while and just
plodded on, his feet rising and falling in time to
Charlie's even pace.
Cltapfer J0 The Wispies
OHNNY to sense their need for rest at the
J
SEEMED
end of their day. He had hesitated several times

as he went along, picking out the smoothest
roads for them. But now he suddenly ducked aside,
to come back and indicate they were to follow him.
They no longer protested anything he did. And
they were both glad that he had taken the decision
out of their hands when they came to the little
cavern he had picked out.
It wasn·t much of a shelter, but it did get them
120
The Wispies 121
out of the direct glare o f the sun. Here the heat all
came through the rocks, and since Johnny had
picked a place almost free from metals, the heat
was conducted fairly slowly. It meant a saving for
their precious batteries, since the suits would have
less work to do.
They ate slowly, too tired to push the food up to
their mouths. Charlie was still apparently the same
as ever, but he was making more cracks about being
old. Dick wondered what he would do when he
reached Charlie's age; even now he was having a
hard time holding his own with the older man.
Dick had slept once or twice before in his suit,
but then it had been as a lark. Now it was serious
business; there was no way to take it off for any
length of time. And he had the disadvantage of
being tired, ami of having his shoulders ache from
the load of the sled.
He tried to stretch out and relax, but found that
the suit simply wasn't adapted for that. Charlie
apparently knew more about it. The old prospector
hunted around until he found a spot where he could
recline in a half-sitting position, and settled down.
"Keep your radio on," he warned Dick. "My
snores may bother you a mite, but we can"t lose
track of each other."
He fell asleep almost at once. Dick hunted around,
trying several spots, before he realized the first one
was the best. Then he began to itch. He had thought

he was over that stage of getting along in a space
suit. It always happened at first, when a man was
just learning to wear one, but he hadn't been
bothered for months. Now he found he had to pull
his arms out of the sleeves to scratch. Once out,
they had a tendency to go to sleep, since the suit
pressed against them too tightly.
But finally sleep hit him. If Charlie snored, he
didn't know it. And he wouldn't have cared.
Charlie woke him in the morning. And for the
first time, he began to understand that the man was
old. Charlie's will was as strong as ever, and he
could do as much in any day as a young man could.
But his body recovered more slowly. Dick felt al
most normal, but it was easy to see that Charlie
hadn't gotten back all his sb·ength and spirit, by
any means. His face was still lined more deeply
than normal, and his eyes showed a touch of red.
But he made a joke of it, and began loading the
sled again, to give it balance.
This time Pete could handle it alone most of the
time. The robot had been cut off completely during
the night, to save power. But Pete was lucky. He
couldn't feel tired, nor could he grow weaker as the
day wore on.
They trudged on, striking a long section of hilly
territory, where even Johnny couldn't find a good
The Wispies 123
path. They had to go back and pick up the tow

ropes again, to give the robot a helping hand.
Charlie made them stop for lunch, having found
a place where some kind of action of the shifting
shadows, caused by the wobbling of the planet, had
cracked off soft stone. It was soft enough to break
into dust as he walked on it, and the dust formed a
kind of cushion under them.
"Be lost without the robot, Dick," he admitted.
"You were dead right, back there in Sigma. To
gether, we can make it, maybe. But I sure would've
been out of luck if I'd gone highballing along alone."
Dick nodded. "That's what partners are for, I
guess. Ever have one before, Charlie?"
"Sometimes," the old man said. "Yeah. I mind
one you'd be surprised at. Or didn't anyone ever tell
you your grandfather came up to Mercury with the
first group-your mother's father, that is? 'S a fact.
Taught me half what I know, before he struck it
rich and went back Earthside. I was just a kid then,
myself. He wanted me to go back with him. But I
guess I ain't sorry I stuck-not even now. Come on,
we gotta get going again."
Then the rough ground suddenly turned into the
smoothest of their whole trip, and they found them
selves on something that might have been a sea
bottom once, except that Mercury had never had
seas. It was probably a great flow of some material
that had leveled out as it cooled and never been

disturbed again. Pete took the load completely, and
Dick and Charlie moved along almost as easily as
though they'd been walking the streets of Sigma
dome.
Johnny had been doubtful about going through
it, and had seemed to waver between two courses,
though the men couldn't see why. It was obviously
a big help, since they were making much better
time. But now Johnny was nervous, judging by his
actions. He kept leaping upward, as if to study the
terrain ahead, and skittering about to check up on
things at the side.
Dick wasn't too surprised when he saw one of
the big demons appear; at least, he was sure it was
a demon, because it made no attempt to communi
cate with Johnny, as the true wispies seemed to do.
But this time it made no move to harm them. It
paced along beside them, while Johnny tried to
quicken their gait. Once or twice it moved toward
them, and Johnny swooped back, apparently
bristling with his own type of anger, since their ear
phones crackled with static each time. But nothing
more seemed to come of it all.
Dick had almost decided it hadn't been a demon
after all when the second one appeared on the other
side. Then more came into view. There were about
twenty of them, moving in toward the little caravan,
The Wispies 125
and more seemed to be coming up over the edge of

the plain.
Johnny had apparently expected two or three, and
had somehow figured they could get through. Per
haps they were more sluggish here, near the edge
of the hotlands. Or perhaps it was simply that the
little packs of batteries didn't offer them the satis
fying meal they could get from a dome or a h·actor.
But in any event, this whole colony had come as a
complete surprise to the wispy. He wobbled about
nnhappily.
Then, abruptly, Johnny seemed to make up his
mind. He rose upward, shrinking to a tiny ball. He
hung there a second, and then went scooting off,
heading back toward the hotlands at the highest
speed he could make. Dick turned to stare, and saw
him disappear from sight.
Sudden]y Dick felt completely lost and alone.
He'd come to depend on Johnny more than he real
ized. In fact, he'd expected Johnny to get him out of
this mess, too. Now, when Johnny simply gave up
and beat a retreat, leaving him and Charlie alone,
it was too much.
He stared helplessly back where Johnny had dis
appeared, and then toward the demons that were
now slowly drawing closer. There wasn't even a
good piece of wire with which to defend himself.
"Dick!" Charlie's voice hit his ears, snapping him
126 BaHfe on Mercury
out of his shock. "Dick, give me a hand. We ain't

dead yet."
He swung to see the old man frantically unload
ing the sled, with the robot making a clumsy at
tempt to help. The metal oxygen tanks went spill
ing off first, and Charlie began to drag the sled
toward a spot on the floor of the rocky stuff near
them. "There's metal here," he said.
Dick couldn't see how it would do much good.
And then he got it, as Charlie turned the sled over,
making a place under its curvature just big enough
for the two men and the robot. He grabbed up the
oxygen tanks and began carrying them over, piling
them along the sled, so arranged that some touched
the metal Charlie had spotted, and the rest touched
ones which did touch the metal.
There were chinks in their armor of oxygen tanks
when they were finished, but it seemed possible that
they could get by for a while. By touching their
suits to the ground, they had an additional armor
against the creatures.
Dick directed Pete up toward the front, since
that was most completely covered by the oxygen
bottles. There was no sense in protecting themselves
without taking care of the robot, since they still
needed him to carry their supplies. Then the two
men slid under, rearranging the bottles to shield
them as best they could.
The Wispies 1 Z1
The demons held off for a while, and then began

to approach. Unlike the wispies, there seemed to
be no effort among them to communicate. They
simply began to bunch together and sidle in against
the men.
"Don't you go blaming Johnny for running out
on you, Dick," Charlie told him. "You can't blame
him. Sticking around here wouldn't do us any good,
because they'd eat him up in no time. I told you
them things eat wispies. And he had enough sense
to know he'd only keep them here longer if he did
try to keep just out of their way. Maybe this way
we'll be able to wait 'em out."
Dick had no desire to blame Johnny, but he felt
a strong sense of loss now, and a growing feeling
for the future-a feeling of pure fear. They'd be lost
without Johnny. So far, the only hope they had
saved out of the wreck of the tractor had been the
fact that they had a guide through the edge of the
hotlands who could be depended on.
"Just an error-a mistake. Proves them things are
as real as we are, I guess," Charlie went on. "Johnny
figgered he could get us through, and he slipped up.
Can't blame him for trying-probably the other ways
were worse'n this one. He . . . "
He broke off his alibi in the middle, and suddenly

pointed through a chink in their armor. Dick bent
forward with a mixture of hope and fear, and his
heart sanlc Coming through the space from the

north were another group of spooks, traveling as if
they were late for the feast. If the demons kept in
creasing in number, some were bound to break
through. If enough attacked, most would be
grounded, but some would be sure to find a chink
that hadn't been protected.
Then he let out a cry. "Johnny\ Charlie, it's
Johnny, coming back with his people\"
"How can you . . . " Charlie stopped, and sudden
hope spread over his face. "By golly, Dick, you're
right. That group is a-talking it over, and the de
mons don't do that."
The new group had drawn back, and a few
seemed to be moving about, giving orders, or pass
ing on information.
There were more of them than there were of the
demons, Dick saw. But he knew that a lot of them
would have tough going, since the demons made up
in ferocity for their lack of numbers.
"Come on, Charlie," Dick cried. He tossed the
sled aside and got to his feet. While Charlie stood
up in doubt, he began stacking the oxygen tanks on
top of each other, steadying them until he had a
pile of them, reaching well above his head and
touching the metal lode at the bottom. Charlie
nodded quickly, and began erecting a similar pile.
The Wispies 129
"You figger them things is going to come down just

to kill themselves?" he asked.
"I dunno," Dick said. "Maybe we can attract
them to us somehow. Or the wispies can use these
as a goal to shoot between. You claim the demons
aren't too smart."
He couldn't finish his ideas, though. Before he
could go further, the wispies moved into action.
Five of them seemed to work together as a unit.
They suddenly darted for some of the demons, each
group of five picking on one of the enemy and snr
rounding him.
The demons not attacked seemed to be uncertain
about this strange maneuver. Some of them moved
up to enter the battle, but most of them drew back.
And the five around each of the trapped demons
went into action, herding their captive along at a
rush. They didn't all succeed, but there was a rapid
succession of crackles of electricity as the ones they
had fooled were driven against the metal of the
oxygen tanks, and grounded out of existence.
They moved back for more, repeating the same
maneuver. Dick sa\v one of the wispies miss its aim
in its effort to keep its captive in line. It went down
the tanks to the ground with the demon. But the
others went on. And now there were two wispies for
each demon.
1 30 BoHle on Mercury
A sudden streak of blue fire lashed through the

space above them, and jerked toward the ground
behind them. Dick swung about, just as he saw
something strike the robot. Pete stood for a second,
and then began toppling. And the wispy over him
drew back, bobbing unhappily about. Johnny had
seen the danger, but he hadn't been in time to save
Pete!
Dick swung around and moved toward the robot.
The demons had had enough hy then, and were
running in full flight, with the wispies after them.
They vanished over the horizon. A moment later the
wispies were back. Johnny went up and made con
tact. When he returned, the other wispies darted
away, toward the direction from which they had
come.
The battle had been a short one, and evil had
been vanquished by good in the proper style, Dick
knew. But he couldn't feel too cheerful about it as
he bent over Pete. The robot had been their assur
ance of a reasonably full supply line. Now he was
gone.
The demon that had landed on him had shown
none of the restraint Pete had been used to from
Johnny. Johnny had kept carefully away from all
main power sources, and the demon had gone
straight to those power supplies. Now Pete's cir-
The Wispies 131
cuits were as dead as the demons that had been

driven down the columns of oxygen tanks.
But there was no use crying over spilled robots,
Dick knew. In a way, they were lucky. They still
had Johnny. Pete had been nothing more than a
mechanical horse to them, but Johnny had proved
again and again that he was a friend as well as a
help to them.
Charlie helped him right the sled and begin re
loading it. They tossed out the batteries that had
been spares for Pete first. And then, reluctantly, but
driven by the fact that they couldn't take more than
they could drag with them, they began laying aside
bottles of oxygen and other supplies. It was a much
smaller load when they finished, but it was still
enough for the two of them.
Johnny hovered around Pete uncertainly, as if
mourning for a friend. But at last he lifted himself
and prepared to begin the trip again. He hesitated,
and seemed to hover uncertainly. Then he moved
to the batteries that had been for Pete.
"Go to it," Dick told him They were no good for
.
anything else now, since they wouldn't fit the suits.

In a few seconds Johnny had used up the elec
tricity in the batteries and was moving ahead of
them again. But he hardly looked as if he'd had a
full meal.
Dick began to realize that they couldn't count on

much more help from Johnny, either. As they moved
out of the hotlands, the wispy was getting less and
less energy from the sun, while expending energy
at a steady rate in guiding them. Sooner or later
Johnny would have to go back where he could let
the sun do a thorough job of recharging him.
When that happened, Dick and Charlie would be
strictly on their own.
eltaptcr II River of Lead
� oUR BY HOUR, Johnny seemed to shrink and lose

energy now, but he kept on. And his fatigue
could have been no worse than that of the two
men. The sled was heavy and clumsy, and they were
ah·eady strained with the constant pressure to go a
little faster.
Twice Johnny located caverns for them to hole up
in, and twice they went on past them, trying to get
just a little more distance behind them before they
113
dropped. But at the third one, Dick gave up, recog

nizing that they were about ready to drop.
"Anyhow," he told Charlie, "Johnny can't go on
like this forever. He must go back to the hotlands
when we sleep. He doesn't look as if he does, but
he should."
"Probably hangs around to watch over us,"
Charlie said wearily. They were beginning to real

ize that Johnny bad taken on more responsibility
than one wispy should have to bear. To Johnny,
they must seem pretty feeble creatures, having to
protect themselves in heavy suits and carry ponder
ous supplies to live at all. But apparently Johnny
had a stem determination to finish what he had
started.
Now he hovered around them as they went down
into the little cavern. It was below the ground this
time, and not as good as the ones they had passed
up. But they were too tired to care much. The wispy
watched them begin to settle down, and bobbed
about uncertainly.
"Go on back, Johnny," Dick told him. "Go back
where you can find some of those fires coming out
of the rocks to eat. You look half spent."
The wispy still hesitated, but finally took off.
Charlie watched him leave through fatigue-red
dened eyes, and shook his head. "Sometimes, lately,
I begin to think I can figger what the beggar's feel-
River of Lead 1 35
ing, Dick. And right now, he acts plumb scared.

Maybe it's dangerous for him to travel across this
country-maybe more demons are around waiting
for him."
Dick had the same feeling, though there was no
way of being sure of much that went on inside the
little ball of lightning. He speculated idly on it, but
he couldn't keep his mind on anything except the
constant ache in his legs and his shoulders, or the
messy, dirty feeling he had from being in the suit
so long.
But even that couldn't keep him awake this time.
He ate part of a normal meal, then put the rest back
on the storage shelf in his suit. He found a place
where he could lie back, and started to settle into
a comfortable position. But before he had touched
his head to the cavern wall he was asleep.
He began having a series of fantastic dreams then,
in which his grandfather was pulling a broken
tractor across a lake of boiling lead and swatting
demons aside with a wave of his hand. The figure
turned to that of Charlie, who was trying to run
away from him And then he was back home in bed,
.
with his mother trying to feed him a big bowl of

electricity, and worrying because he couldn't digest
it properly.
Then the nightmares really came. He had no clear
pictures. There was just a feeling of horror that
1 36 Battle on Mercvry
shifted around, growing worse each second. And

physical pain coupled in, so that he seemed to be
feeling hot needles of shock hitting him.
Dick became half conscious then, but everything
was still fuzzy. He shook his head, then leaned back
to try to sleep again.
Something bit him, with a sharp, stinging sen
sation.
He jerked awake this time, to see Johnny danc
ing up and down in front of Charlie. As he watched,
a tiny flash of electric energy shot out, striking
against the older man's helmet. Charlie jerked and
moaned, while his beard seemed to spread out and
stand on end.
Dick blinked. For a second he thought he had
been wrong, and that it was a demon in the cavern
with them. But now Johnny came over, and seemed
to realize that Dick was awake. He jerked out the
entrance of the cavern, then darted back, and jerked
out again.
Dick didn't stop to think it out. He knew that
Johnny wanted them out of there, and that it was
urgent. With a moan of agony, he got to his feet and
began shaking Hotside Charlie. The old man came
to at that, and got to his feet, striking out with a
heavy fist, but missing Dick. Then his eyes were
open, and he started to apologize.
Dick didn't give him time. "Out! Grab our stuff
River of Lead 137
and get out, Charlie," he said. "Johnny's going

crazy!"
It was true. The wispy was dashing up and down,
trying to get them into motion. Dick grabbed for
some of the supplies they had brought into the little
cavern, and began scrambling up to the surface. As
he moved, he seemed to feel the wall of the little
hole begin to move. And Charlie must have felt it
too, since he let out a sharp cry and redoubled his
efforts.
The wall of the cavern slanted upward steeply,
and they had trouble with their loads, but they were
outside, just as the opposite wall of the little cavern
broke open and a ton-ent of liquid lead came burst
ing out!
In another few seconds they would have been
caught in it. Now it bubbled up and began cooling
off. They were far enough beyond the true hotlands
for it to cool to a solid state, and Dick shuddered
as he realized what might have happened if they
had been caught in it. Their suits could stand hot
lead for a while, but they wouldn't have been able
to free themselves from lead that was turning solid
around them!
Johnny had arrived in time-but it had been too
narrow an escape to suit Dick. He frowned down
at the stuff that was still oozing up from a few places
where the surface hadn't yet hardened.
"How come?" he asked. "I thought we were be

yond all the real hot stuff."
Charlie shook his head doubtfully. "Underground
river of it-probably stirred up by the storm. Must
come down here from some lake further back, and
may even get clear to the twilight belt. Mercury
has plenty of heat inside here to keep the stuff
warm, if it £nds a good passage."
Dick might have argued with him, but he'd seen
it, and he had more than enough proof. Whether
it was a river that ran under the surface or only a
product of some local volcanic activity didn't matter.
They'd gotten out in time, and they could worry
later about how it had all happened.
Then he looked down, and frowned. "We've lost
more supplies, Charlie," he said slowly. "I got some
of them, and you have a lot there. But even so, we're
short at least half of our oxygen."
They began checking, but gave up. There was
no use in counting tanks and batteries now. They
knew that there weren't enough, and £guring just
how much they were lacking didn't help things.
Johnny looked a little better, but he wasn't his
old self, and he seemed to be a bit slower as he
cruised along. They carne out of the good, flat sec
tion, and again had to go through a rough scraggle
of little hills and sharp crevices that required hard
work in pulling the sled.
River of Leacl 139
There seemed to be little more trouble that could

happen to them, but they hadn't really had it all
yet, as they found out later. They were working
their way across a sharp break in the ground, like
a huge mud crack twelve feet across and about
thirty feet deep. Dick stood at the rear of the sled,
holding it by his rope, and Charlie was already
across the little chasm. Johnny was hanging around,
waiting while they worked the sled over. Then sud
denly Dick's rope broke under the load.
The contents of the sled went hurtling down into
the chasm! They were left with an empty sled and
the oxygen and batteries they were wearing. Beyond
that, everything lay thirty feet below them.
For a minute Dick stood staring down, and there
were tears in his eyes. He wanted to sit down on
the edge and begin crying. And he wanted to shout
at the big joke the fates had played on him. But
he could only stare at the stuff that had spilled from
the sled, without moving.
Charlie pulled the sled all the way to his side
and began unfastening the ropes that were left.
"Should have guessed it was going to happen. Threw
the rope across and looped it over a rock here. Went
across it, swinging and swaying, until I could pull
myself up. Then I just tossed it back. The rock was
sharp, Dick, and the rope we have takes punishment
fine, up to a point. But then it begins to give out.
We got real hotland rope, and it's too cold for it

here. Well, these look okay."
Dick watched him move to the edge and stare
down, before he realized that the old man had
every intention of going down after the supplies.
Then the stupor of the new trouble was gone from
his mind in a quick moment, and he was himself
again.
"My job," he told Charlie.
Charlie sounded stubborn. "I should have checked
that rope. And that makes it my fault."
"We both should have checked it. But I'm still
lighter than you are, Charlie. And here, even five
pounds will make a difference. Maybe five ounces
will. Toss me the rope, will you?"
Charlie hesitated for a moment. Then he threw
it over, and Dick estimated it carefully. Long
enough. He caught it close to the edge, while
Charlie braced himself. Then he stepped over.
He hit the wall of the opposite side with a heavy
thud, but he had been braced to take it up with
his legs, and they had grown used to this type of
passage across the cracks here. Charlie grunted,
but he held on somehow. Dick began lowering
himself into the crack. Ten feet from the bottom,
he found that it was narrow enough for him to go
the rest of the way by bracing his arms and legs
River of lead 141
against the two walls. And at the bottom, there was

barely room to turn around.
The things from the sled were scattered every
where, and most of them were going to be hard to
tie to the rope. Dick went after them, chasing down
the oxygen tanks. They had been designed to take
rougher abuse than this, but he was worried about
the batteries. He examined them carefully. Most
of them were seemingly all right, though one had
a crack in it. It had landed right side up, and none
of the fluid had spilled. He had no way of knowing
whether it would still work, but he unhooked the
fairly fresh battery on his suit and hooked the
cracked one on.
The motor went on humming, and he nodded to
himself. He'd have to be careful not to lie or sit
down with it on, but it would be all right as long
as he kept it upright. The thick liquid would even
tually evaporate in the vacuum here, but not before
he had most of the good out of its charge.
Above him, Charlie waited patiently, or moved
along the edge of the chasm, trying to spot any
thing that Dick had missed. He reported two more
batteries lying further down, and out of Dick's
sight. As far as they could remember, that accounted
for everything.
Hauling the things up wasn't hard, but it took
forever. The rope barely reached, and there wasn't

enough to make a good hitch around more than
one or two things at the same time. Charlie had to
pull up and let down until it seemed to Dick that
the old man's arms must be ready to drop. Yet
either one would have been delighted if there had
been more to raise; it might have meant more hours
margin before they found themselves faced with
either no power or no air.
Johnny had darted upward, apparently trying to
find a place where there was stronger sunlight to
give him more badly needed energy. He was look
ing worse, now-enough to be seen. The swirling
spots that formed a pattern on his surface seemed
to be slower and less orderly.
At last the final load was raised, and the rope
came down for Dick. He took a grip on it, wonder
ing if it would hold his weight again, and whether
Charlie would be able to take the strain if it did.
But he finally worked his way up to the edge and
Char1ie's reaching fist without further trouble.
Now, woodenly, they took up the march again,
leaning together as they pulled the sled along. The
sun was close to the horizon, but they had decided
before that neither one of them could trust himself
to guess how far from the middle of the twilight
belt they were. All they knew was that they had
to go on, regardless of fatigue or anything else.
River of lead 1.43
Now Johm1y came bobbing back from a scouting

b·ip ahead, and his actions showed that something
else had come to plague them. Dick watched him
for a second. "More of the demons?"
Johnny twisted about in the manner that ap
peared to mean "No," and swirled uncertainly.
"Lost?'' Dick tried, but with the same result.
Charlie stared doubtfully ahead, and his voice
was as tired as his eyes. "So something has happened
to the trail since you saw it before, and it's going
to be tough. Think we can make it at all, Johnny?..
This time the wispy bobbed a doubtful assent.
Dick shrugged and bent forward against the tow
rope again. "Okay, Johnny, lead on. If we have a
chance, we have to take it."
They came to the trouble within five minutes
another chasm that seemed to have cracked open
within the last few days. Here the solar storm
going on was something that made much less differ
ence than in the center of the hotlands, but it had
probably upset the balance of the crust all over
the planet. The opening before them looked like
the product of some kind of an earthquake, though
Dick was unfamiliar with such things except in
pictures.
It was at least twenty-five feet wide, and seemed
to be twice as deep, though the wall on this side
had another crack that ran down at a steep angle,
but one which might be traversed for half the dis

tance down or more.
Dick stared into it, bothered by the feeling that
it might snap closed on them at any minute. But
he put that down as sheer wild imagination, and
began getting the sled ready to carry down. Below,
and within reach of the slanting crack they would
have to climb down, was a little shelf. They ex
amined the rope carefully this time and made sure
everything was fastened on to the sled. Then they
let it down gently, until it touched. Dick shrugged
as he dropped the rope after it. Now they had to
get down there.
Climbing down was rough, but not impossible.
They reached their supplies, and lowered them the
rest of the way to the bottom. This time, they had
to trust themselves to a combination of falling and
sliding, while they tried to hold themselves back
with their hands. But they landed nearly on top
of the supplies, with no bones broken, and with no
real damage to their suits.
Johnny had come down part way into the nar
row channel, and now started north along it, lead
ing them to some place where he seemed to think
they could climb out. But Charlie sat down, shak
ing his head. "This is good enough for me, Dick.
We can stop here as well as anywhere else. And I
don't mind admitting rm plumb beat."
River of lead 145
Dick felt the same. He dropped carefully onto

the floor of the chasm, making sure the battery
was still upright, and began to reach for the last
of the food that was inside his suit. After that
they·d have to get along without eating, unless
they reached an outpost somewhere.
He glanced down, and then leaned closer for a
look at the surface on which they sat. "Looks like
we found one of those underground lead rivers,
Charlie," he said slowly. "This has been worn
smooth, and it's still coated with lead. It must
have cracked right above the stream."
Charlie stared at the thin layer of lead under
him.
"Well," he decided at last, "if the river is going
to start flowing again while we sleep, it'll just
have to do its worst. rm a·fixing to sleep no matter
what happens. I betcha I do."
"Lead·s a soft metal. It should make a good
bed," Dick agreed. He slipped his shoulder back
against one of the walls, bent his head forward,.
and was asleep.
eltapter I2 The Impossible Trek
lHERE WAS no sudden return of a river of lead
during their sleep, though Dick was almost sorry
about it as he awakened and realized what lay
before them. Charlie was still sleeping, his face
now sagging and gray, and no life left in him.
With the pretense he had kept up while awake
stripped away, he was suddenly o1d and gaunt.
Dick knew that he probably looked the same. It
wasn't age, but hopelessness that was working
against Charlie, just as it was hitting at him. They'd
1 46
The Impossible Trelc 147
practically lost all faith in their ability to get

through. And yet they had to go on, as long as
they had a breath of air left. Behind them lay seven

htmdred people, and their self-chosen responsibil
ity was heavy on their shoulders.
Dick started to go over to the older man, and
then shrugged. Another hour or so of sleep wouldn't
make that much difference. It might even help
them. He squatted down by the sled and began
replacing the oxygen tanks on both suits, and test
ing the batteries.
Then he started to reach for breakfast, until he
remembered that all the food they had packed into
the suits was gone. There were still the emergency
lozenges-enriched candy that gave the greatest
possible amount of energy for its weight, but which
was supposed to be kept until the last possible
moment. Dick shrugged off the faint touch of hunger
that had come when he knew there was no food,
and sat waiting for Charlie to awake.
But the reactions of Hotside Charlie surprised
him when the older man did snap out of it. He
looked up at the walls that rose above him, and
shook his head.
"I guess fm quitting, Dick," he announced. "I've
had enough. Too much, by golly. And I ain't as
young as I used to be. Rot has set in. And it's time I
quit play-acting I was still a real man. You take what
you can and go on, and I'll just sit here, waiting
for that lead river to come back!"
It shocked Dick Charlie was the one man he
would have sworn couldn't have said it. It wasn't
like him in any way. Doc Holmes had admitted
that Charlie had the strongest will to live he'd seen.
And he wasn't in as bad shape as he had been when
Dick had first found him.
Dick sat puzzling over it. His mind was still thick
with fatigue, but he knew there must be an an
swer somewhere. And he finally pinned it down,
after seeming to chase it through his whole mind
and back agam.
"All right, Charlie," he said. "I guess you're right.
We might as well quit kidding ourselves. You're an
old man, and fm just a kid. We can't take it. And
rm glad you had the courage to admit it first, be
cause I don't think I could have done it . . . Well,
I guess we might as well send Johnny home."
Charlie sighed, and leaned forward to study
Dick's face, but the boy knew nothing would show
there but weariness. "yeah. Yeah. Might as well
send Johnny home, Dick But I still think you could
go on. I'm telling you how I feel, but you don't
have to do anything just because I do it."
Dick shrugged, and sat quietly. Charlie fiddled
with his finger in the soft lead of the floor, drawing
The Impossible Trek 149
ticktacktoe marks on it. Johnny darted down, and

up again, but they paid no attention to him.
Finally Charlie sighed heavily. "I feel sorry for
your mother, kid. She's going to feel mighty bad,
I guess. I'll bet she's a-thinking you're all set to
come back bringing help any minute. She knows
you're the kind who can do it, too, by golly. Guess
she's apt to hate me for dragging you off thisaway."
Dick said nothing. He put his shoulder back
against the wall, and bent his head down, closing
his eyes. He heard Charlie stir impatiently and
sigh again, but he didn't look up.
"Wish I was young again. Sure do. You betcha."
There was a querulous note in the old man's voice
now. "In them days, nothing could have kept me
here. rd of been up and going up this thing so fast
you couldn't say Jack Robinson. Mighty spry I was,
when I was young like you, Dick. Give me six
hours sleep, and I could get so full of pep nothing
could hold me down. And I didn't have a mother
and dad a-sitting home waiting for me. Nor a
pretty little sister. But I couldn't be tied, no sir.

You betcha."
"I guess you must have been quite a man," Dick
agreed. "You always were a lone wolf. Maybe it's
because I've always had a family that I just haven't
hardened up. I couldn't have gone this far alone,
1 50 Bottle on Mercury
and I suppose you could have done better if I

hadn't got in your way. But I'm stubborn. I always
was stubborn, Charlie. I guess I just had to come
along because I was stubborn."
Charlie managed a heavier sigh this time. "Know
just what you mean. Stubbornest man that ever
lived, myself. Why I'd starve myself to death in a
barrel of cheese iffen I'd said I wasn't hungry. Some
folks used to call me Old Stubborn."
Dick's head came further forward, and a faint
snoring sound came from his mouth. Charlie
squirmed on the lead, leaving marks with his mittens
as he swung from side to side. He sighed, but this
time it was more completely a part of himself.
He squirmed again, and finally began to heave
himself to his feet.
"Doggone smart aleck," he said accusingly. "And
if there's one thing I never could stand, it's a smart
aleck brat who thinks he knows ten times as much
as his elders. Can't stand young fools who think
they know all there is to know. Dick, you young
whelp, you get up from there, or I'm not too old
to tan the hide off you. Get, now!"
Dick grinned wearily, and climbed to his feet,
staring at Hotside Charlie. "'Old Stubborn," he re
turned. "I should have made you sweat a lot longer
for trying a dirty trick like that on me. Do you think
I couldn't figure out what was on your mind? I
know. Half supplies for two are full supplies for

one. So you were going to make me hate myself the
rest of my life, just so you could feel noble about
sending me alone."
"Now see here, you . . ." Charlie began. Then he
snorted faintly. "Doggone you, Dick, never had a
better partner in my life. Not even your grand
father. Just like him, except you're a real Mercury
man. I betcha you'd of sat there till you did starve
before you'd have given in. Stubborn, contrary,
ornery young whelp. But by jingo, you almost make
me feel young myself."
"I'd have sat there until you came along, Charlie.
And the truth is that I just couldn't have gone on
alone if I'd wanted to. I couldn't take this by myself.
I wasn't lying about that."
"It's foolish, boy-but it sounds kind of good,"
Charlie said. "Well, where's Johnny taking us?"
For a while, the byplay had almost revived them.
But their muscles remembered the day before, and
the day before that, and the brief Hair of hi gh
spirits sank down again as they hiked along the
floor of the chasm, following Johnny Quicksilver.
It was nearly noon to them when Johnny finally
led them to a section where part of the opposite wall
had fallen in. It had littered the floor of the chasm
with rubble and had knocked a great gouge out
that led up at a steep, but climbable angle.
But it was unsure footing, and the sled held them

back. Time after time they had to leave it and go
searching for a place where they could find footing
enough to drag it up after them by the rope. And
each time required a long and careful search to be
sure that their motions wouldn't simply pitch them
back down to the bottom again.
They went on through that day, dragging the
sled behind, while it became lighter steadily as the
oxygen tanks and batteries were removed. But there
were no more cuts in the ground. It was rough, but
Johnny now found a passable route for them. He
was showing his own starvation more and more, but
he kept on, with no hint of turning back. And the
men couldn't give up while an alien life form kept
wasting away to save them. Their pride in being
human would have driven them on, if nothing else
had been involved.
They slept that night on the surface, making no
effort to find shelter. Johnny apparently wasn't
worried. Probably the last demon had been left be
hind, since it was already cool enough here to make
life uncomfortable for them, though it would have
crisped the men in minutes without their suits.
Johnny woke them in the morning, and they
went on. Now Dick was beginning to be aware that
he was hungry. He kept imagining the dinner his
mother would fix when he got back to Sigma.
The Impossible Trek 1 53
He must have mentioned some of the food aloud,

because Charlie grunted unhappily. "Com muffins.
Com muffins, and hog bacon, real cow butter, coffee
from trees, and heavy cream. And you start with
a glass of juice from ripe oranges. That's what I
miss, Dick-real food, instead of this synthetic stuff,
or those hydroponic things. Been a long time. Cot
soI used to dream about eating soya meal and vita
min pills when I thought about a feast! Well, some
day we'll both eat real food-and you probably
won't like it, never having had it. And I probably
won't eat it, because it has been too long. Forget it,
just dream that we find a place where they've got
some synthetics waiting for us. That's all I ask."
They threw away the last empty bottles of oxygen,
and put on the reserve bottles from their suits.
Those held more than the bottles they had been
wearing, but the time limit was now fixed. They
were surprised to find that they still had extra
batteries.
"Something's screwy here, Dick," the older man
said. "You know what I been figgering? We're al

ready in the twilight belt. We been in it for the last
thirty miles. Because I remember that territory we
went through now. And it's a long ways from the
Relay Station. Either Johnny's lost, or some mighty
funny business is going on."
"Johnny wouldn't try any tricks," Dick protested.
154 BaHia on Mercury
"Who said he would? I just think something's

gone wrong. Maybe he had to change his map, be
cause we couldn't cross where he meant us to with
out the tractor. And maybe we still got three days'
walking to get to Relay Station. It's about that, if
I remember right."
Dick was shocked, but he couldn't really believe
it. He had only been in the twilight belt a few times,
and those had all been at North Twilight, which
really lay at the pole, and wasn't like the rest of
the belt. The real belt was the section where the
sun seemed to come up out of the sky and climb a
ways, then turn back down. Each eighty-eight days
Mercury went around the sun once. And each time
she did, she wobbled, first to the right and then to
the left, making these narrow bands where there
was a season of dawn and dusk. On the belt, men
could set up larger cities, since the expense of cool
ing or heating was nothing beyond what it was
worth.
He studied the sun now, noting its position. He
stirred uneasily, trying to remember how high it
should be, and failing. But he had a feeling that
Charlie was right, and that they had been led into
the twilight belt, but not where they had expected
to come out.
It was too late to change now. They had perhaps
twelve hours of air each, if they were careful to

guard it and to keep from useless exertions.
They had left the sled behind, since there was
now almost nothing to carry, but they were not
making any better time because of it. Their muscles
were rapidly reaching the stage where they would
be able to move only by lying down and waiting
for a rain to wash them downhill-and it never
rained on Mercury.
Johnny had gone off again. He acted as if this
was all territory he had never seen before and that
he needed to check up as he went along. That fitted
with Charlie's idea that they had been forced to
take a big detour for some reason. Yet Johnny was
also acting as if they were coming to some objective
which should be reached at ahnost any moment.
The wispy came rushing back now, bobbing
about. He was more excited than they had seen
him since he had first begun the trip, but they had
no way of knowing whether it was good news or
bad.
They didn't waste time trying to quiz him. They
tottered to their feet and followed along. If Jolmny
knew where they could find help with the amount
of air they had left, it would all be well. If he didn't,
they could do no better by themselves. By this time,
they were quite sure that Johnny knew exactly how
long they could live on the amount of air they had.

His other behavior had indicated a long, profound
consideration of the peculiarities of humans, and
they doubted if anything so important as air had
escaped his attention.
Sometimes now, things were all confused. They
had cut down the trickle of air flowing into their
suits. Men could live longer that way, since most
breathing wasted a good percentage of the oxygen.
But it meant living in air that was stuffy and thick,
and they grew sleepy at the first exertion.
At the moment, Dick half thought he was Charlie,
and was wondering why Charlie had fixed himself
up to imitate him. It didn't seem quite right. Charlie
was carrying on a long conversation with some old
acquaintance in which he assured them that he
was much too old to lead the expedition to the
Bronx Zoo, whatever that was. He'd seen an aard
vark dancing with a dodo, and he wanted air to
waltz me around again . . .
No, that last part was Dick, and he had been
trying to sing.
"Will you lend me your comb, Vance?" Charlie
asked politely, tapping Dick on the shoulder. "I'm
going to the aviary this afternoon, and my brother
is dining with crumpets."
Dick shook his head heavily. "Porky Williams, if
you hit my sister with that stick again, I'm gonna
The Impossible Trek 1 57
fasten you to a filament connection, connected all

wrong, and Snaith should have known better, don't
you fly well?"
They separated, and started off in opposite direc
tions, each apparently satisfied.
Then Dick stumbled, just as Johnny was coming
down to take the situation in hand with a few mild
shocks-or so it seemed, from the position in which
Dick suddenly saw him. He had come within an
inch of Dick's hehnet, but now he backed up
quickly, and jerked downward to the thing which
Dick's shoe had touched.
It was a stake with a metal :Hag on the top, and
it said that Henry Simonoff was taking claim to this.
Dick looked up slowly, studying the landscape.
Then he let out a yell, and twisted over the valve
on his oxygen tank, until the musty air was whipped
away, and his head was clear again. He spotted
Charlie wandering on, with a smile wreathing his
face, and took out after the old prospector.
But Charlie seemed to have guessed that his
separation from Dick was wrong. One of his fingers
had already touched his oxygen valve. Now he
looked up as Dick reached him. Reason was back
in his eyes as he followed Dick's pointing finger.
Five hundred feet away, a small dome that might
house fifty people stuck up from the ground.
They headed for it, without making any useless
remarks, running as fast as their weary legs would

carry them. But long before they reached it, they
knew part of the answer.
The dome was empty. It must have been used
at one time, but now it had been idle for months.
It wasn't a hasty evacuation for the storm, with
most of the supplies left behind, but a real deser
tion. And that meant that there might be nothing
left inside.
But they couldn't tell until they'd tried it.
Cltapter 13 Hope and Despair
lHERE WAS air inside, as they found when they

pulled the lock shut behind them. It clanged
with a sound that could be sent only through air.
They exchanged glances, and began pulling their
helmets off, cutting the oxygen circuits out first.
It was breathable air, sweet and rich after the
stale stuff from their tanks, and they stood gulping
it in. Dick began to yank off the rest of his space
suit, and stood finally in his normal street clothes,
twisting about for the luxurious feeling of having
1 59
nothing to hold him in. He wanted a bath and a

bed. But mostly he wanted air against his skin, and
nothing else.
Charlie had stripped his suit off, too. They hung
them near the airlock, and the older man nodded
toward a small section in the center of the little
dome. "Hydroponic garden, and still growing,
though it's in bad shape," Dick agreed. «No won
der the air is still good. Hey, Charlie-food!"
The food wasn't as vital as the air had been, but
they had been fasting long enough and living light
before then. They moved back to the gardens, to
find tomatoes ripe and some melons that were almost
ready. It wasn't the richest meal in their lives, but
it was satisfactory enough. The melons were rich
in sugar, and the tomatoes in minerals and vitamins.
What more could they want?
Charlie investigated carefully as they went along,
but they could see no sign of the reason the place
had been deserted. "Must have been some scientific
work with the silicone beasts," he decided. "At one
time, Earth went crazy about that, so they prob
ably sent a staff out. Plenty of money behind it."
Dick nodded. The place was tiny, and built with
a single house and garden center sort of plan, rather
than the separate dwellings to be found in the
larger domes. But it had been as well equipped as
a place of this size could be.
Hope and Despair 161
They found beds made up in one room, though

most of the sheets had been taken away. Dick
thought again about a bath, but he was too tired.
After the worry, he couldn't even think about such
necessary things as air any more. All he wanted to
do was to lie down with no suit over him, and
sleep like a human being.
They explored the place more thoroughly in the
morning, when their heads were clearer and they
could concentrate on the real reason for their trip.
They began by looking for some means of com
munication, but there was none. That wasn't sur
prising, of course, since many scientific studies were
done here without radio communication.
Their main interest was in finding a few tanks
of oxygen and a couple of spare batteries with
which they could resume the trip to Relay Station.
But both of these were missing. The air inside the
dome was all there was-and when that leaked
away, there would be no more. Tanks had been
connected once, by the looks of things, but had
been taken away. And there wasn't a trace of a
battery in the place.
"Must of come from Earth, all right," Charlie
said hotly. "Pull up and leave a dome-and no sup
plies in case a man gets stranded here, like us!
You don't find any Mercury men acting up like
that, Dick."
Dick had to agree. It was customary to leave

air and power in anything that was big enough to
contain it, in case of emergencies. Men never com
pletely abandoned a dome-except men from Earth,
as Charlie had indicated.
But they did find a map, on which they located
themselves, and also Relay Station. The station
was to the south of them by a distance that would
take about fifteen to twenty hours of hard hiking
and they had air enough for perhaps ten safe hours
in their tanks.
"Looks like Johnny slipped on this one," Charlie
said. "Cotta give him credit for trying, but he
missed it."
"Maybe not," Dick protested. But he could find
no reason for his arguing, except that he couldn't
blame Johnny for not knowing the exact contents
of all the domes on the planet.
After an hour more of searching Dick had dis
covered four empty oxygen flasks, hidden under a
workbench and a tiny electric tractor that used
huge, useless batteries, and which would go about
as fast as a man walking. The batteries were still
charged, and the machine was usable-but at no
more than four miles an hour, which still wouldn't
take them to Relay Station before they ran out of air.
They were staring at it in disgust when Johnny
came in-or rather, staggered in. He looked sick
Hope and Despair 1 63
now, and nearly all of the pattern was missing from

his surface. The domes here were not coated with
metal, since it was too far from spooks and the
heat was never that high. But he seemed to make
an effort to come through the wall. He settled over
the top of one of the several bulky batteries. At
Dick's nod, he dropped down, but sucked out the
electricity slowly, as if trying to make sure that
none was wasted.
It was a help, obviously, but he still needed a
lot of building up, and he knew it. He darted for
ward several times and came back to circle their
heads. Then he gathered speed and went sailing
out through the wall of the dome, heading toward
the center of the hotside.
His work had been done, though, and Dick knew
that he'd already come much further than he should
have. He'd wasted his strength to the limit, and
had somehow found them a place where he thought
they could accomplish their purpose. It was no
fault of Johnny's that they were as much failures
as ever.
Charlie had been staring at the map he still car
ried with him, with this place and Relay Station
marked in red. Now he spread it out on the little
tractor that Dick had been studying. c<Can you get
more speed out of that thing, Dick?"
Dick shook his head, and the other nodded. "I
thought so. Then there's only one chance. And it

isn't too nice a one. It'll depend on luck. What we
short of, anyhow? Oxygen. Power enough, at least
here in Twilight. We can get along without a lot of
it. But we can't get along without stuff to breathe."
Dick nodded. Charlie pointed to the map, and
drew a line straight out into the section that was
always facing away from the sun. "Then there's
where you can find oxygen-iffen you're lucky.
It's frozen out there. Every bit that this planet
ever had went drifting over there and froze solid."
Dick began to see what he was driving at. They
had the four empty tanks, and there was the
tractor-useless for any speed, but capable of
carrying them along with a fair load. He measured
the distance to the line that was marked "Frozen
Waste," and compared it to the scale below. It
came out to about fifty miles, which would take
a good twelve hours of traveling.
'Tve been there," Charlie interrupted his
thoughts. "It ain't that far-you come to scattered
bits first, then this stuff where they got the line
marked off. Iffen we're lucky, we hit oxygen right
after we get out of the twilight belt. T'otherwise . . ...
Otherwise, Dick thought, they would freeze to
death, which would be better than dying of lack
of oxygen. Out there all they had to do was open
their suits, and the bitter cold would creep in . . .
He shook his head, knowing that they were still

only hall functioning. They were so poisoned by
the fatigue of the trip and the complete hope
lessness that had suddenly come to an end, without
any real solution, that their minds were unable to
focus on anything. Charlie kept knitting his brows
and trying to work something out, but it was ob
vious the vague ideas in his head were as thick
as those that Dick had.
There was one idea which might work. And
right now they had to try it. With ten hours of
oxygen apiece and with enough power for the
little tractor, it was worth the gamble. If they
made it, they could ride on in fair comfort to
Relay Station, and even exist there until help
came if they found it deserted and with no air.
He nodded slowly, and Charlie carefully put
the map away. Dick was still thinking of a bath
as he followed the older man out to make another
meal on tomatoes and melons, but he knew that
there wasn't water enough here in free form-and
there wasn't time, either. How many days had
it been since they left?
He asked Charlie, and received a startled look.
"Why, it's . . . by golly, how long ago was it? I
can't recoliect rightly. About ten days, I reckon."
It seemed to agree with the vague time sense
in Dick's head, but it might be wrong by a day
or so. And Sigma dome had given a maximum of

two weeks before they left! For a moment Dick
felt guilty about the sleeping and loafing they
had done here in the tiny dome; yet he knew that
they might even save time by relaxing another
day. Then the urgency that lay behind this long
trip hit him, and he rushed through the simple
food and got up quickly.
Charlie seemed to catch the feeling, and they
wasted no more time. The little tractor rolled out.
It was nothing but a platform with two simple
caterpillar tracks under it, without a dome built
over it. They could only ride it in their suits. But
it would carry the empty oxygen tanks out, and
with luck-the full ones back.
They took another look at the map, but found
nothing that was useful. The simplest method was
to cut straight east, directly into the darkside.
According to the map, there was no really rough
going that way to slow them up.
They dug out the tanks and put them on behind.
Then Charlie made Dick stop while they found
a shovel among the tank-farming tools, and some
thing like a big funnel. "Wouldn't do a mite of
good to go trying to pick up oxygen with your
hands, Dick," he said. "We can get into enough
trouble without that, by jingo."
They climbed into their suits, feeling almost
at once the stuffiness they had associated with the

last. But it was only the heavy scent of their own
bodies, too long inside the suits, Dick knew. And
after a few minutes, it didn't bother them much.
Then the tractor rolled slowly through the lock
and headed west, toward the section of Mercury
which had never seen the sun and which was as
cold as the other side was hot.
They would find no life there, Dick knew. All
life operated on the use of energy, and there
simply wasn't enough energy in any form on that
side for even the most crude and primitive living
thing.
Twilight belt was only a narrow strip, and they
were already well inside it. Now the sun sank
lower and lower on the horizon, until it touched
the surface of Mercury, and began to dip below
it. They were leaving Twilight. A little later, Dick
had to switch on the head lamps of the little
tractor. The sun was gone from sight, and they were
in deep darkness, with only the stars shining down.
He'd been shown the stars first when he was ten,
and he'd been afraid of them. But now they no
longer bothered him. He glanced up . . . and jerked
back to his driving as the little machine slipped
one track into a gully, and lurched, almost throw
ing them off.
They had their radios off now, to save energy,
168 8aHie on Mercury
though Charlie thought there was enough of that.

But taking precautions did no harm.
There was something white under the treads,
and Dick looked down in surprise. He guessed what
it was-frosty crystals that must be the first bit of
ice or frozen air. But there was no time to waste
on that. They had to get further in, where the
chances of finding oxygen frozen solid for their
use would be improved.
Driving was getting harder, and Charlie came
up to relieve him. The old man set a straight
course, and followed it with only a few slight
variations. The ground seemed to be smoother here
than it was on the hotlands.
Dick had time to study this queer half of the
world now, but there was very little to see. As
they went further in, the crust of white deepened
and became solid, like the ice Dick had seen before
only in the refrigerating units. He'd read about it,
but it still seemed strange to think of ice that was
measured in feet of thickness and spread over
half the world.
Charlie leaned back to touch his helmet to that
of Dick. "Should of found some by now. How
much time you got left on that there dialr'
Dick glanced down, and studied it, moving
around where a bit of leakage from the back of
Hope ancl Despair 169
the headlights would illuminate the oxygen dial.

"Two hours," he finally said.
He hadn't realized that they had been traveling
that long.
"Then we better find it soon, or our luck runs
out," Charlie said. "Guess we'll just have to keep
a-looking."
They rolled on. Oxygen would have a bluish
color, quite unlike ordinary ice. Dick had seen
the laboratory product, since they sometimes had
to freeze a specimen from the mines to determine
all they wanted to know about the way the crystals
were formed. But the solid oxygen he had seen
had been in tiny amounts. He wasn't sure he could
recognize it if he saw it lying right in front of
him.
An hour later they were still further inside the
darkside country, but the terrain had changed only
a little. Now they came on clumps and hillocks
in the ice, and Charlie began to knock bits loose
with the shovel. They went on, the tractor slow
ing a bit as it found rough going.
"We'll be hitting the section where it begins
officially soon, won't we?" Dick asked.
Charlie switched on his radio, apparently chang
ing his mind and tired of bumping helmets. Dick
reached down to turn on his set, and found that
it was stiff. He'd forgotten that the suits, while

designed to be universal for either extreme heat
or bitter cold, had been serviced for use in the
hotlands. The greases used had never been meant
for the darkside conditions.
Then it snapped on, and he heard Charlie's
doubtful voice. "I dunno, Dick. Them lines on the
map don't mean much. The men who put 'em there
mostly just made 'em look pretty. Out here, they
ain't no sure way to say where something begins
and something else leaves off. She just sort of
slides around. But we sure should of hit her by
now.
,
Dick took the shovel and began knocking at the

little hummocks that stuck up. Charlie caught his
arm, and held it back suddenly. "Take it easy, Dick.
Don't go pushing yourself here. Gets so cold steel
is just like glass-brittle, breaks like nothing you
ever seen in metal. Crack her gentle."
At the extreme limit of the headlights, a low cliff
stuck up, and they went crawling toward it. It was
perhaps fifty feet high in one place, and sloped
down to half that in others. Dick decided that it
was probably what was meant by the line on the
map.
Charlie let the machine churn along toward it,
glancing down at the dial on his oxygen tank. Dick
checked his own, and saw that it was good for only
about fifteen minutes more. Their luck, it seemed,

had about run out-either that, or it was waiting
like an Earth-panther to spring after they'd gone
past!
The tractor came to a stop, and the cliff lay
directly ahead. Charlie turned the lights up and
down and back and forth along it. But there seemed
to be nothing which gave forth the color and gleam
that they knew belonged with frozen oxygen.
"Might as well have a good look. Might be our
last one at anything," Charlie said. ..But keep your
eyes peeled sharp, Dick. Never can tell when you'll
find what you need. Lot of times things turn out
all right just when you've up and decided you're
already a dead dog."
His voice didn't sound confident, though. Dick
climbed off the tractor, just as the alarm bell on
his tank rang. That gave him five minutes in which
to change to a fresh one-and there was no fresh
one to change to!
A minute later Charlie's bell also rang. And they
were standing squarely against the cliff. The old
man took the shovel and struck the handle against
the stuff, first lightly and then with a ringing blow
that chipped off a few fragments.
Dick looked up. For a split second, he stood
speechless. Then he jumped forward and grabbed
Charlie, pulling him violently to the side. He'd
seen fragments at the top suddenly topple and begin

falling toward them, sending out more broken bits
as they came tumbling down.
It fell within a few feet of them, but only a fine
shower of dust actually touched them. Then it
was over.
And it hadn•t helped much to pull the old man
away. They had perhaps a minute left.
Cltapfer /4 The Silicone Beasts
� HARLIE SEEMED not to know that the time was

drawing near. He moved over to the splinters
that had fallen and picked one up. For a
moment he studied it and then came leaping to
ward the tractor, his legs suddenly pumping with
the last energy reserves he had. He hit the splinter
with the shovel, and yanked Dick to him.
Dick had guessed it before he felt the connection
on his oxygen tank suddenly opened. Something had
looked right to Charlie, and the old man was going
1 73
to try it, at least, before they were dead. He felt

a brief suck of air from his suit, before the au
tomatic seal worked. Then the big splinter dropped
into the tank, and Charlie was screwing the tank
back on, and cutting on the little heater switch that
would warm the tank.
A man could live for a couple of minutes in his
suit, even without an oxygen supply, and Dick had
no way of knowing at first whether it had worked
or not. But Charlie wasn't waiting. He began yank
ing his own tank and stuffing in splinters of the
ice that had fallen-and which did have a peculiar
blue color, now that Dick looked more closely.
They waited, for at least five more minutes, be
fore the old man looked up. "Might of known ifd
be way up there, Dick. And don't you ever let me
hear you say anything against luck. None of us
would've lived here without it, when I was a kid.
And I guess it ain't changed much, at that, by golly!"
There was enough in the fragments that had
fallen. They had to break them up, and Charlie
warned him against handling them too carelessly,
since concentrated oxygen in any form was power
ful stuff. Then they began to stuff them into the
tanks, filling each loosely through the mouth of
the flask As soon as two of the former empties were
filled, they switched to those, and began filling
their old flasks.
The Silicone Beasts 175
It took less time than Dick had expected. He had

taken Charlie's idea of the funnel for granted, and
had expected to have to melt the stuff and pour it
in. But the tanks had been equipped with mouths
big enough to get a fair splinter through, and it
had been simpler to do it the easiest way-and
probably more effective.
Charlie backed up the little tractor and swung it
around, while Dick hopped on behind. They made
better time back, following the path they had worn
smooth on the way up. But their new supply of
oxygen wouldn't be all gain. By the time they
got back to the little dome, they'd have only two
tanks left.
Dick suddenly yelled. and Charlie ducked, then
swung around. But it had been only an idea that
finally hit the boy. "Charlie, this was all waste.
Why couldn't one of us have taken both tanks be
fore and gone on to Relay Station? That would have
given one man twenty hours, which should have
been plenty!"
Charlie gulped. He didn't even answer, for at
least half a minute. "Because we got too busy look
ing for the trees," he said at last. "We couldn't
make out the forest, I reckon. Get a figure running
around in your head, you don't let go. I knew I
was good for ten hours. So ten hours was the oxygen
we had! Sure you're right. But it ain't any timt-
to worry about what we might've done, Dick. Main

thing is, we'll get to Relay Station."
He shook his head at the stupidity they had
shown again, but he wasn't letting it get him down.
And after a few seconds Dick followed his example.
What was done was done-and maybe it might
even work out better, somehow.
They didn't spend much time in the little dome,
this time. They went in, ate quickly without taking
off their spacesuits, and switched to a fresh battery
for the tractor. It could make no more speed than
their maximum, but at least it was more com
fortable than walking.
They were out again in half an hour, and head
ing for Relay Station. Dick looked up at the sun,
which was now apparently up again, though still
close to the horizon. Relay Station lay south and
west, and there was no route shown on the map
as being the best. He put it away, and went to
take over the control of the tractor, to let Charlie
catch a nap.
Then they rolled along at a fair speed, with the
ground more level than Dick had expected. He
hunched over the controls, his eyes on the course
ahead, only glancing back once in a while to see
that Charlie hadn't thrown himself off in his sleep.
It was on one of these occasions that he spotted
something behind, slinking out of sight as his head
turned back. It disappeared too quickly for him

to make out any specific shape, but he knew it
had been real, and not a trick of his eyes.
The next time, he jerked his head back suddenly.
This time there was a brief glimpse of something
that was a dull gray, smooth and slippery, and
about the size of a small horse, judging by the pic
tures he had seen of horses. But it slipped out of
sight almost instantly, flattening out and sliding
toward the side, where a bunch of rocks gave it
cover.
Then there were two of the creatures. And after
that they began increasing steadily in numbers.
There was no longer any doubt but what they were
following the tractor.
Dick had heard of such monsters, but had put
them down mostly as tall tales told by travelers and
prospectors, since no one he knew had actually
seen the things. They were natives of the twilight
belt, according to the legends, and never strayed
far from it. Their basic structure was made up of
silicones, like the plastic of the robots. On most
worlds that would have been a poor second to the
regular carbon compounds, but Mercury was a
special case.
Men had discovered the silicones quite a while
before. They had found that they could build up
compounds like the carbon compounds by using
silicon and oxygen-the so-called silicone combina

tion-to replace the carbon. The result had been
a group of chemicals from very thin oils to heavy
plastics, not too much unlike the carbon chemicals
they resembled. But where carbon gave substances
that could stand only a little temperature change,
silicone compounds seemed to remain the same
through the widest general extremes of temperature.
And these limits had been improved through the
years.
Yet nature apparently had found the same ability
to stand sudden changes in temperature an asset
here, and had built one of the two types of life on
Mercury on the basis of silicones, instead of the
usual carbon-compound flesh.
Or he was about willing to believe it was an
actual truth, instead of a mere fable. Certainly the
things back there had no resemblance to any of the
Earth forms of life, and they were even further
from the will-o'-the-wisps like Johnny.
Now they were gaining a little on the tractor.
Dick argued with himself for a few minutes, but
he wound up by waking Charlie.
The old man turned his head around in answer to
Dick's pointing finger. He nodded slowly, as he
collected his wits.
"Silicone beasts," he acknowledged. "And they're
nasty things, at this time of the year. On the other
cycle, for some reason, they're completely harmless.

Makes it kind of hard for most people to believe
the stories they hear. Probably most of 'em are true."
"And what do we do about it?" Dick wanted
to know.
Charlie shrugged. "Hope you can outrun 'em,
which means that they ain't too curious about you.
Sometimes they just seem to stay like that, not
moseying any closer. If that's no good, then you
do anything you can to chase 'em off. Might slip
into a bunch of rocks with one of the batteries.
Give 'em a good scare with a jolt or two when
they stick their snouts into our business. Might
work. Might not."
For a while longer the beasts followed along
at the same distance. They were ugly things, al
most formless. If they had bones, they were strange
bones that could bend at will. And they seemed
to put out feet at will, or to flow across the ground
without moving a muscle.
"Best you catch a wink of sleep," Charlie de
cided. "I can watch 'em. Been chased by 'em before.
You betcha."
Dick tried it, but he found himself unable to get
to sleep. He kept lifting his head to catch the
creatures in their change from one form of locomo
tion to another or to see if he could count them.
Since some of them were usually sliding sideways
out of sight, while others more bold ran over their

fellows, it was a hard thing to do. He finally esti
mated that there might have been twenty of the
things, some no better than a foot in length, others
ten times that size.
Then the creatures began to gain. They seemed
to move no more rapidly or consistently than be
fore, but the distance shortened. Even as they drew
close, it was hard to decide whether they had some
basic form or not.
Now Charlie began to worry. The creatures
wouldn't eat a human being or even deliberately
kill him. But they were filled with a slinking kind
of curiosity and were perfectly capable of mashing
a man to a pulp while sniffing him over to see why
he acted as he did. They were fairly unintelligent,
as far as could be determined.
They were within fifty feet when Charlie gave
up. "Keep an eye out for a good place to hole up,"
he told Dick, and he was following his own orders
already. "Place too narrow for 'em, just wide enough
for us. When you see it, shout."
They were hugging the edge of a rocky section
now, and Dick swept his eyes along it as they passed,
but most of it seemed to be open, and of no use
as a hiding place.
Then he clutched the old man's arm. "Over
there," he said. A bunch of sharp rocks stood up
The Silicone Beasts 1 81
on end, forming an outline that suggested there

might be a circle inside. Outside, the entrance was
narrow-almost too narrow. It was open to the sky,
probably, but that wouldn't matter.
Charlie swung the little tractor at once and picked
up one of the tanks of oxygen. Dick followed his
example and got ready to jump. The tractor came
alongside the place, and Charlie stopped it. He
got off and waited for Dick to squeeze through
the narrow passage. Then he managed to squeeze
through himself. He reached out and shoved the
tractor out of the way, and sat watching.
The beasts drew up in a circle. Some of the
smaller ones could have slipped through the spaces
between the rocks around the two men, but they
seemed as ba£Hed as the others.
Charlie shrugged. "Dunno. They just act that
way. Seem to figger they're all the same size, and
that's the same as the biggest one among 'em. Until
the big one goes through, none of the rest will try."
Dick considered their oxygen supply thought
fully. There was no reason to worry yet, but they
didn't have enough to permit them to wait out these
beasts if the things decided to make a siege of it.
Charlie had no idea of how long they would wait.
They'd been known to leave in a few minutes, and
there was one case where they waited for over three
weeks.
The old man found a fragment of rock and

settled back against it to try to sleep. Dick waited
to be sure that it was real sleep, and not an act to
get him to stay back while Charlie did some fool
thing to the beasts. Then he found another rock
for himself and managed to fall asleep after half
an hour's worrying.
Once he woke up to see something that looked
like a bad attempt to squeeze a face out of putty
stuck against the rocks. It was a naturally ugly
head, and the way the creature was wobbling some
thing that might have been its lips made it even
uglier. He shuddered, before he saw that it was
much too wide to squeeze through. And the picture
of the thing in his mind didn't help his next attempt
to sleep.
The next time he snapped out of his nap was
when one of them suddenly slapped a tail against
the earth and charged angrily at the stones. They
stood up under the assault, by some miracle, even
when it kept repeating it. But the ground shook
each time the tail slapped down.
The strange part of it was that any one of them
could have come through by turning sideways and
flowing through, as they had flowed across the
ground behind the tractor. But this seemed to be
against the rules, for some reason.
Dick got up and moved around, working off the
numbness. At his first movement the creatures drew

back out of the way. He noticed that when he moved
toward them, they started going around to the
side. When he stood still, they moved away. But
at any other movement, they tried to come through
the rocks toward him. It all fitted the legends he
had heard, and it was no easier to believe in person
than it had been when it was nothing but an idle
story.
He saw Charlie watching him, and went back. "I
don't get it," he admitted.
"Why should you?" Charlie asked. "You think of
'em as animals. But they ain't-they're just a bunch
of walking plants."
"Plants?"
"Yep. Move to the darkside, get themselves some
water. Move to the hotside, grow a while. Then
wander around in Twilight, giving anyone a hard
time. Had a motion up before the Governor once
to get rid of 'em, lock, stock and barrel But he
hemmed and hawed around until it got dropped."
"Do they ever kill anyone?" Dick asked, eying
their huge bulks.
Charlie nodded. "Now and then. You best get
some sleep, boy. We may have to break through
'em, after all."
The more he heard of the things, the more cock
eyed they seemed, and the less likable. Dick hunted
a corner out of sight of most of the beasts and

turned his back on them. He could still feel their
tails thumping the ground once in a while, but he
refused to look at them.
Then, to his surprise, he fell soundly asleep, with
out any dreruns.
This time it was Charlie who woke him. The old
man put up a hand, as if to his lips. "Shh. Something
fwmy going on. I seen something sneaking up be
hind, over there. And I never heard tell of silicone
beasts climbing up a rock. Watch."
Behind them there seemed to be a flicker of
movement, but Dick couldn't be sure. He moved
forward cautiously, with Charlie at his side. Again,
a bit of movement caught his eye. It was a dark
object, dangling around a rock, and seeming to be
clinging on firmly.
Side by side, they moved toward it.
Now suddenly, it moved again, and the two men
gasped. It looked like a hand, or the arm of a
spacesuit thinner than any they had seen before.
And as they looked, the top of a head groped up
above the rock for a brief second, and then col
lapsed again.
Dick jumped forward. As long as it wasn't a
silicone beast, he was willing to take a chance at
this stage. He moved over the rocks. The object
had disappeared now, but he went on, sliding in
among the boulders along that side. Finally he was

standing between the two rocks where he had seen
the hand.
He looked down, and his voice caught sharply
in his throat. He heard a mutter of questioning
from Charlie, but he was too stunned to answer.
Instead, he reached down his ann.
It was real, all right. His space mitten was caught
at once. Dick heaved, and there was a scramble on
the other side.
Then, finally, the robot was coming over and
into the enclosure with the two men. And the
robot was the same Pete they had left burned
out back in the hotlands!
Cltapter 15 Bottle of Monsters
� HARLIE STARED at Pete, but the robot suddenly

seemed unimpressed with his reception. He sat
down slowly on the rocks, and then slumped
over completely, falling over on his back. Dick
bent to pick him up. Then a bluish glow came out
of his head, and a wispy shot out. Dick let out a
sharp cry. "Johnny!"

But the wispy behaved wrong for that. It simply
hung in the air, waiting, making none of the bob
bing motions that Dick had come to associate with
his pet.
1 86
Battle of Monsters 1 87
Another glow appeared, and a second wispy

shot up from Pete's head. It was immediately fol
lowed by a third. And finally, two appeared to
gether, separating as they shot away from Pete.
One of those danced around Dick's head, and this
time his shout was answered by more bobbing,
while the other four wispies gathered around in a
half-circle, seeming to stare at the two men.
Charlie stepped back, shaking his head inside
his helmet. "Now I've seen everything," he said at
last. "Dead robots that go walking around, wispies
all mixed together. . . . I might as well be on a
real ripsnorter, Dick. Nobody'll believe a word I
ever say.
..
But Dick was watching Johnny, who was slip

ping back into the head of the robot. Pete sat up
weakly and put out a hand, as if asking for help
to sit up. Dick helped, bringing the back up straight,
and letting the robot support itself against one of
the stones. It motioned with its hands toward the
chest plate, making motions as if taking that off.
"Bad here," it said. "Burned out connection."
Dick frowned, wondering just how much of the
automatic and nonautomatic response circuit of the
robot the wispy could handle. But if it could feel
electricity, which was logical for such a creature,
then there was no reason it shouldn't know what
it was saying. Behind him, he heard Charlie gulp-
1 88 Baffle on Mercvry
ing, but he had been surprised before that Johnny

hadn't learned to make the robot talk. It would be
pretty crude, of course, since the machine had a
small vocabulary. But certainly talking was no more
problem than walking.
Or maybe it was. Maybe getting all the routing
circuits straightened out had taken a lot more time
and practice, and Johnny had been working on that
whenever he got a chance until he had finally
learned the trick.
He found the hinged part of the chest plate and
threw it up, taking out the little set of tools that
came with the robot. In a few minutes more, the
chest plate was entirely off. But he had no idea
where the trouble lay.
Something spat, and the robot jerked. It spat
again, shooting out little sparks. And now he saw
it. One wire, high up in the chest, had been burned
through and wasn't quite touching. He twisted it
together with the little pliers, knowing that a good
job would have to wait until later. But the voice
came at once.
"Good, Dick. Hard to make power jump break.
Now Pete is okay."
It was a pretty clear explanation. The robot had
been damaged only by having the main power line
broken, and the wispies had found that they could
short it just enough to keep the machine working.
BaHie of Monsters 1 89
But it didn't explain how they had found him, or

why they had bothered bringing the robot. Then
he realized that the speech itself had given the
reason. To communicate, they had to have Pete.
He put his other questions, and Pete's voice did
its best to find an answer. It seemed that the wispies
had been on the constant watch for Dick, but they
had been forced to do it in relays, changing off
while the exhausted one went back to the hotlands
for more energy. Then, when they had found Dick
at last, they had come together in Pete.
Well, he had no idea of how much help they
would be, but they had found him in a tight spot
again. He pointed out the silicone beasts to the
wispies, but he doubted that they could help much.
He wasn't sure what their reaction was when he
finished, but the robot nodded faintly. ..All work," it
said. Then Johnny came out from the head, and
Pete got up on his own power, now no more than
a normal, old-style robot, waiting orders.
"Better do something pretty quick," Charlie sug
gested. "Those things out there seem to be riled
up by your pretty little friends. Been yelling for
blood."
They weren't exactly yelling, but the silicone
beasts were definitely thumping. Their tails were
beating the earth, and they were leaping at the
stones around with renewed fury. Something had
set them off, and it might have been the arrival

of the wispies.
One of the stone shafts that had made the little
enclosure suddenly cracked sharply. The gap left
wasn't quite big enough for the head monster out
side, but it was a good beginning, and the silicone
beast went to work with more enthusiasm than
sense. Its head changed shape with every blow it
delivered to the next stone, but that seemed of
no great importance to it. The stone began to
crack.
Dick and Charlie moved forward, knowing they
couldn't do much at this stage, but feeling obligated
to make the attempt. Dick added this to himself,
feeling sick with fear; but he couldn't show it in
front of Charlie. Going against the great beasts out
there seemed something like trying to chase an
elephant back with a fly swatter.
Then five blue streaks shot through the air. They
seemed completely sure of themselves this time,
unlike the battle they had had with the demons.
They singled out the leader of the monsters and
Hashed down at the base of what served as his
neck. There was a sudden wild threshing of the
beast's tail, and all four wispies Hashed out at the
end of it. The big monster quivered slightly and
began to Hatten out. He started to slide sideways
and then went into a complete retreat, sliding
Bottle of Monsters 191
under the feet of those behind him at a steady,

unchanging pace.
One by one, starting with the largest and work
ing down, the wispies were repeating the tactics.
At the base of the neck, out at the end of the tail.
Whatever they did must have seemed horrible to
the monsters. As the wispies left their bodies, they
also began sliding backward. Then the larger beasts
were all taken care of, and only the babies remained.
They seemed to receive milder treahnent, since they
were attacked by only one wispy at a time.
In less than five minutes, the horde of silicone
beasts had disappeared, and the wispies came back.
But as usual, in their activities so far from their
chief source of energy, they had been drained more
than seemed good for them by the activity.
Johnny seemed weakest, probably because he
had been in chief control of the robot.
They grouped up now, and four of them suddenly
flashed at another. Dick couldn't be sure, but it
seemed logical that Johnny was the middle one. In
any event, the four seemed to drain themselves to
the limit, while the fifth wispy grew fatter, and
began to swirl properly again.
A second later the four were streaming away,
obviously badly in need of nourishment.
Johnny slipped into the head of Pete again, and
the robot seemed to take on personality almost at
once. He climbed out of the little enclosure, got onto

the tractor, and backed it up for Dick and Charlie
to mount. Without a word of instruction, he seemed
to have grasped its principles. And while he was a
long way from being a smooth driver, he seemed
to be doing well enough.
He was obviously bound in the right direction,
which wasn't too surprising, since that had been
their planned line of march.
Charlie stretched out, yawning inside the suit.
"Dunno what you plan to do, Dick, but I figger on
catching the rest of that shut-eye. Johnny there
seems to know what he's doing, and we got some
time to kill. "
He turned over on his back, and began snoring
within a few minutes.
Dick sat up, trying to think. He had had all the
sleep knocked out of him, and was beginning to
think that there was no real sense to anything. This
whole trip had been crazy from the start. Two men
and a wispy-with everything thrown in for good
measure, and very little balance, it seemed to him.
The silicone beasts left him slightly sick, and yet he
couldn't help feeling sorry for them. They had ob
viously been such easy marks for the wispies.
There were more of them along the course they
were traveling, but none seemed to take the ini
tiative to start trailing the little tractor. Apparently
Battle of Monsters 193
they worked only in herds. One would start some

thing, with as little reason as possible, and all the
others would begin to join in.
He looked at the map again, wondering how much
longer it would be before he'd reach his goal. It
didn't seem possible that the trip ever could end.
Like Alice in \Vonderland, he expected to find him
self tumbling head over heels down another stair
way or through a rabbit hole the moment he turned
around.
The Grst sign he had that they were actually near
the Helay Station was a sudden movement of the
robot that jerked Dick's head up. It had switched
from two hands to one, and the result had not been
good for the tractor. It struck a rough section,
Gou:�.ccd, a11d then finally crawled back to a steady
pace.. But Pete was pointing, and Dick followed
the direction of the finger.
There was a larger dome, this time. Again, it had
no layer of aluminum over the plastiG, and it seemed
almost like a ghost dome to Dick, who wondered
how people could live inside a transparent dome.
But the main thing was the knowledge that at
last he was on the final lap and about to be of some
use to his family and people instead of merely to
robots, wispies, and assorted other creatures and
life forms.
Then the tractor sputtered and began slowing
1 94 Baffle on Mercury
down. Pete fussed with the controls, but it did no

good. The battery had given up its share of elec
tricity, and wanted to rest. And the tractor couldn't
do anything about it.
Charlie woke up with a start, and spotted the
Station. He nodded. "Sure deserted. Well, reckon
we don't care · what it's like, just so it gets us
through to East Twilight. Come on, shanks' mare."
He began walking toward it, with Dick at his
side and the robot in the rear. The buildings were
not only deserted, but some were apparently be
ginning to fall to pieces. Only the big radio shack
in the middle still seemed intact, and that was the
main interest to Dick. If the radio worked, the
town could give up the ghost immediately after
ward, as far as he was concerned.
The lock had been fixed, at least. They opened
it and went through, with Pete still carrying the
wispy inside him. Then they went down the dead
streets.
"Scientists from Earth killed it," Charlie com
plained. "They never can leave things for our boys
here to work out; they have to come over and use
what we build, ruin it for any use, and then leave
it like this. Shame. Five hundred people can live
here. And they don\ because our government
doesn't have money to make up for the damage
done."
Battle of Monsters 195
Dick stared at him doubtfully. The speech was

out of keeping with Hotside Charlie. The man
shrugged as he saw Dick's eyes on him. "Forget
it, Dick. Gets my dander up once in a while, I
kinda get a soapbox. Used to have me an education
when I was a kid, talked as dandified as anyone.
Here, lessee what we got left."
They had come to the radio shack, and now
Dick threw open the door. Once there had been a
lock on that, but it had been tom off by someone
who prized one of the oldest traditions of the
planet-that inside a dome no lock was ever needed.
Dick went inside, and his eyes gleamed at the
machinery there. Without question, Relay Station
had been given the best equipment. If any set
could rouse East Twilight, this one should do the
trick.
He stopped for a moment, to stare at an auto
matic sender that was on. It had stopped running,
but he spun it through his fingers by hand, reading
the message off the tape. There was nothing new
about it; it was the same message Charlie had found
on the rocket ship-a message to all domes to aban
don anything outside of Twilight and to go to
East or West Twilight for the duration of the
storm.
Dick reached under the table for the power switch
that should be there. His fingers jerked forward to
Hick it on, and then he frowned. This time he

found it, and realized that it had already been
shoved all the way forward. So, maybe it worked
in reverse. He'd seen other cockeyed jobs with
switches. He shoved back, but again without
results.
For a second more he frowned. This time he
threw up the control panel and began juggling the
switches, trying to read the meters as he tested
it. But the meters all remained on dead zero, in
dicating that nothing was going out or coming in.
He followed a cable from the table across the
room and to another tiny room that lay behind the
false partition at the rear.
The most advanced batteries lay there, all con
nected properly, and with no cut-off switches be
tween. Dick refused to believe his eyes, but he
tested the batteries dully. They were drained dry.
With the machine on automatic, it had been left
to run on, sending out its signal as long as there
was juice enough to drive the tape repeater. And
now it was silent only because it hadn't the power
to repeat the message again.
He saw the telltale coupling that spelled power
from sun-cells outside. These little devices could
be installed on the roof, and they would then tum
the radiated heat of the sun directly into electricity.
In a week or so, they could have raised the level
Bottle of Monsters 1 97
of power up to a kick sufficient for Dick's purpose.

But there was no time to wait for that.
At Dick's request Charlie went through the
building and then took off for the rest of the dome,
while Pete with Johnny inside scurried the other
way. This was a good-sized dome, and there would
be batteries around. If not, there should be an
atomic boiler and generator.
Dick found the latter two himself, where they
belonged. But the slugs had been pulled from the
pile, leaving it inactive.
Both Charlie and Pete came back with a single
word: "No." Whoever had last been in the station
had felt that more power was going to be needed
elsewhere and had gone about stripping the dome
deliberately. Charlie angrily denounced the type of
men coming into the planet now-no better than
Earth lawyers and undertakers, in his own words.
But his anger and Dick's bitter sense of loss couldn't
give power to the dome. For power they would
have to cut off the automatic sender and then wait
a week while the batteries charged up enough to
handle a full load to East Twilight.
A week. And he had no idea now whether there
was one day, or three, left for Sigma dome. But
he was quite sure that it couldn't hold out for a
week.
eltaptcr I6 Demon Power
� ETE LAID a hand on Dick's arm, and the boy

jumped. It took time to get used to a robot
that could act like a man, even when he knew
that something a thousand times as alien as a robot
was inside it. Or was Johnny alien? Was any in
telligence really alien?
"Sorry," the Hat voice of the robot said. "I have
tried."
Dick blinked a little at that. The words had never
been in Pete's vocabulary. No robot knew the
meaning of .. I," and the grammar was stripped to
1 98
Demon Power 1 99
the bone. But he supposed Johnny had his own

ways, once he'd solved the puzzle of the speech
dicuits.
Then the first bit of a wild idea crossed Dick's
mind. "Johnny," he asked. "Johnny, your people
can suck energy from batteries, can't they? And
you can give each other the energy. Suppose you
shot energy into a battery? Would that work?"
Pete nodded. "It would work, Dick. But . . ."
He left it hanging, while Charlie stared at him.
"Seems to me you spooks pick up English mighty
fast, Johnny," he observed. "Yesterday, no English.
An hour gone, robot English. Now you get fancy.
How come? Or d'ya get a charge out of pulling
monkeys out of lampshades?"
Pete looked at him then, and this time the nod
was slower. "I heard that expression forty years ago,
Charles Hennessy-when you were lost once."
The old prospector's face jerked suddenly. "You!"
"Me," Pete answered ungrammatically. "I was
always the one, because I conceived the great idea
of contacting the human race. For forty years I
worked on your language, learning it. I tried to find
ways of sending it tluough yoUI radios, but I could
not modulate it. Now, through a system of relays
in a robot's body-an old robot, not a metal one-1
have found the trick of how sounds are put to
gether in this way."
He paused, and thought for a minute. Then he

shrugged. "I have become, I am afraid, more hu
man than will-o'-the-wisp. And it has not been easy,
when humans have hated us."
Charlie had had enough, but Pete sighed, almost
like a man. "You gave me this idea, Charlie-when
you asked for something I knew you wanted, and
offered me something you knew I wanted. I began
to sec that you had a purpose to the noises you made.
And that you men of Earth were not all monsters,
like the silicone beasts who once had brains, until
they felt they could make us slaves. You were a good
man when you were a kid, Charlie-and by golly,
you're not such a bad old duffer now!"
"What about me?" Dick asked. "You may get a
kick out of kidding Charlie, but I was asking a
serious question!"
Pete shook his head. "No. Dick, you don't know
what you ask. It would take many of us to recharge
your batteries, and we would be weak after that.
Dick, there are only eighty of my people left on all
Mercury-eighty, against unknown numbers of de
mons. We can't risk what you ask. I like you, and
I've risked myself and my people time and again.
But we can't serve as living batteries. That is too
dangerous. No! I came to your people for help, not
to kill my race!"
Demon Power 201
Suddenly, the glow swept out from the robot, and

Johnny snapped away into the distance.
"Mite talkative, ain't he?" Charlie said. "But Dick,
he's got a point. Forty years a-learning to talk with
us so he can get some help against the demons and
stop us killing off his people. And the first squawk
out of you is for him to go make electricity ferry
boats out of them."
Dick shrugged bitterly. He'd known that he had
no right to ask it. And yet there was nothing else to
do. He needed power; and he probably needed it in
less than six hours, if he wasn't to find himself with
out air again. There had been no oxygen tanks in
Relay Station. Now Johnny, the last hope, was gone,
angry because he'd had to ask too much.
\Vith so few of Johnny's race left, between the
constant war with the crazy demons and the in
genuity with which men had killed off good and
evil alike, it had been too much. But he hadn't
known.
He got up from the chair into which he'd sunk
and tried to stop thinking about what was due to
happen to all of them. But it didn't work Charlie
suddenly came over beside him, and the old eyes
were suffering with him. There were some advan
tages to being human besides talking-and one of
them is knowing when not to talk.
"Well," Dick said at last, "it seems to be finished,

anyhow. But I'm glad we tried."
There was a sharp flickering, like a row of bullets
of light shot out of a machine gun. When he jerked
his eyes up, he was looking at a long line of small
blue spheres spread around the room, and Pete was
standing up again.
"My people," the robot said. "All of them-and
with all the electricity they can find for now. Which
batteries do you want charged, Dick?"
Dick looked along the lines of wispies. A sudden
picture came to him. Eighty of them, heading back
from here with only enough energy to get home.
And a horde of the demons coming down on them . . .
He choked on his decision. Sigma dome was all
he had ever had. Yet there were only seven hundred
people there out of the millions and billions of men
left in the solar system. And Johnny, who had only
eighty left in a hostile world being stolen by demons
and another race, had brought out his entire race to
save a few of the men who had learned to kill them.
"Go on back, Johnny," he said. "Get out of here,
and take them with you. Go out and sock some
demons around with all your energy. Gang up on
them. Only let me alone, will you? Let me at least
have a little peace before things go the way they've
gotta. Scram!"
"Dick," the robot insisted. "Dick!"
Demon Power 203
"Get out! I wouldn't even ask the demons to kill

themselves off! Not even the silicone monsters! I
don't want any blood sacrifices, Johnny Quicksilver\"
For a second the robot stood irresolute. Then it
turned slowly. "Sometimes we can learn new things
from thinking of the ways of another race. You have
learned, Dick. Perhaps I have learned. We shall see."
The flickering came again, then the wispies were
gone. Dick turned his back to Charlie, and stood
looking out of the window toward the sun that was
low on the horizon, and still was leaping with great
gouts of Harne.
"You can go, too, Charlie," he said slowly. The
false anger was gone from his voice, leaving it a
faint wash of sound in his suit. "I'm sorry you had to
hear me do that. I . . . oh, darn the whole mess . . ."
Charlie sat quietly for a minute. Then he stood
up. "Guess I know how you feel. But, well, I'm kinda
glad I did hear that, Dick. And I'm just sorry your
Dad couldn't have heard it and known what it
meant. I got a feeling he'd have been right pleased.
He ain't any less of a man than you are, Dick. Just
remember that. And remember I'm a-thinking that's
quite a compliment to him, too. You sweat it out
of your system, and when you get done saying all
the things you don't mean, you come down and I'll
tell you why your grandfather went back to Earth . . .
and why I never did."
Dick moved back to the empty batteries that

would never be filled, and to the automatic tape
machine. He cut a message on it, pushing the keys
down by hand-the message he had wanted to send
to East Twilight, to tell them that Sigma dome would
die without another rocket and to add that Hotside
Charlie would die here in six hours without air. It
was a useless message, but it wasted time.
Then he turned to leave the room and find Charlie.
But something was coming through the dome. He
stopped and stared at the sight. There were eighty
tiny blue balls of fury chasing about half of their
own number of the larger spheres that must be de
mons. They weren't merely chasing them; they were
herding them.
He heard steps running, and Charlie broke into
the room, just as the first demon was driven forward.
And now it was forced down with a furious ex
change of tiny little bolts of electricity that came at
it from both sides. It darted downward against one
of the batteries.
There was a flash of fire, and the demon was gone.
But more of the wispies were waiting with another.
One at a time, they drove in the demons, and one
at a time, the demons died. By the time the first
lot was finished, others were being herded in.
"Seems like our friends learned something,"
Charlie said. "Seems like Johnny took you seriously
Demon Power 205
when you told him to gang up on them. And you

know, I'll bet that's the first time the wispies ever
really thought about going out with blood in their
eyes. "
"You're right, Charlie," Pete said quietly. "We
ran, but we never chased. We thought violence was
abhorrent. We were polite to each other, and we
each fought our battles alone. But today I have dis
covered something-more than the trick of ganging
up on the demons. Much more. And I think my
people have at last found it, too."
The automatic relay tape began to tap through
the machine, and the big tubes were lighted. Dick
jumped to it, and then saw that it was his message
going over. The power of eighty or more demons
was behind it; it was their first repayment for all the
power they had stolen. It was enough for the
moment.
"Violence," Johnny said through Pete's voice. "We
hated violence because it was evil. But today I
heard Dick cry out in violence, because his wish to
be good was violent. And I knew that was why you
are a great people. You are violent when you are
wrong, and you do wrong things a great deal. But
you are violent when you are right, and then you
do great things. You deny blood sacrifice, Dick, but
you give it with no politeness. Only with a violent
rage that we dare question your right to give it."
He paused. Then he pointed outward. "Long ago,

Dick, the silicone beasts tried to enslave this world.
We were quiet and not too unkind. We removed the
strength in certain cells of their body, until they
were not quite intelligent. And we left them to
menace others with the evil that remained in them,
as they endangered you today. Less long ago, but
too long, we refused to hurt a very dangerous, very
stupid, and completely insane group of our chil�
dren-children who were mutated into something
strange. And you have been threatened by these
demons, as we have been nearly killed off by them.
We were never violent; we did the least we could.
We came to give you half of our energies, because
it might be enough. And you tried to give us all you
had, because you could never do less than enough.
You're a very violent race, you men. But if we can
find peace with you, and work with you, perhaps we
can learn to be violent when right, also."
He snapped out of the robot, and out through
the dome, and his people began to form up around
him.
"Quite a talker," Charlie said, when Dick sat
without speaking. "Yep. Almost gets violent about
his eloquence, don't he? Dick, you'd better answer
the message that's coming in, before they get violent
over there at East Twilight."
4 � 0 0 4
Demon Power 207
An hour later the big rocket began dropping down

to a landing in front of Sigma dome. The lights were
low in the dome, but the air-cooling pumps were
still working, burning up the last dregs of fuel, but
still bravely fighting the storm.
Dick slipped out with Charlie and Pete, just be
fore the new supply of fuel was being received.
East Twilight had promised not to tell the whole
story until he had seen his family, and they kept
their word, more or less. There were only a few of
the people of Sigma who had heard it before he
started down the street.
But he knew it would have to be told, and that
it would be rough, being a hero, for a while, until
new things came up to fill their minds. Besides,
according to the letter he was carrying from the
governor of Mercury, he'd be going back to Earth
soon, to the university where his father had gradu
ated . . . and both his grandfathers . . . and where
he could find himself just a man who had to bone
up to pass his tests.
It was enough to know that the wispies and men
would be working together from now on, without
his having to stand around being a hero to both of
them.
By the time he got back, he'd be just another
engineer, if he was lucky. And that was all he'd ever
wanted to be.

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$2.

Fifteen unique novels that set new high standards of

drama and excitement in the science fiction field . . •

VANDALS OF THE VOID-by }ACK VANCE. The defeat of space

ROCKET TO LUNA-by RICHAHll :\IAHSTE:-<. A young stowaway on

MYSTERY OF THE THIRD MINE-by Ho'lt:IIT W. Lowr-mEs. Space frontiersmen leave

THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET-by .KENNETH \Vmc:HT. A young captive on Planet X pre­

MISTS OF DAWN-/1y CnAD OLIVEII. A space-time 1:1achine traps a twenticth-cenhrry

FIND THE FEATHERED SERPENT-h!f En:-< Ilu:-:n:n. Through centurit>s-back to the

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

Jacket Design by Kenneth Fagg

Endpaper Design by Alex Schomburg

Cecile Matschat, Eclitor

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

Copyright in Great Britain

and in the British Dominions

Copyright in the Republic of

Made in the United States of America

ERCURY unpleasant little world. Long after

men have learned to live on Mars and Venus

part of this blazing fury. The light and heat we

sun. Here the temperature would be neither too hot

has taken spherical form and somehow doesn't

valuable metals must be available to encourage

Life in a Dome . . . . vii

1. Blame Johnny Quicksilver 1

2. New Life for Pete . . . 15

4. No Answer from Twilight . 42

5. Only Two Weeks. . 56

7. A Map from Johnny. 81

8. Into the Hotlands 94

10. The Wispies 120

11. River of Lead . 133

12. The Impossible Trek 146

13. Hope and Despair 159

14. The Silicone Beasts 173

15. Battle of Monsters 186

16. Demon Power . . 198

lHERE WAS NO Am in the tunnel, and the tempera­

crystals of quartz. On the surface above there was

nearly as dark a color as his black hair. There were

Lately, everyone had seemed worried and nervous,

machines could locate the fault, but this had to be

There was nothing more for Dick to do. He

Johnny was pure electricity, somehow alive and

But he knew it could understand some of what he

picked up the hose, and began working stolidly

father switched over to the emergency band. He

swallowing painfully. He'd had it coming, he knew;

corrode it. It served to reflect most of the glare of

"You're not going to shoot him, are you?" Dick

face. "Might not be too bad, if we had supplies to

� ICK DISCOVERED the next morning that there was

"Dickie lost his job! Dickie lost his job!" Her

steps quickened, and he began to forget the worst

the glass sealed again. And tricky soldering was

be the most envied woman on the planet. Besides, a

dancing even more excitedly.

THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET-by .KENNETH \Vmc:HT. A young captive on Planet X pre

lHERE WAS NO Am in the tunnel, and the tempera

head twisted crazily. Johnny jumped out in ap

He was almost unconscious at .the end of the sec

pletely, and the atomic pile that should have pow

"There's still the ship," Rogers had said. "Ac

had not been damaged. Most of them still de

seemed to have wispy business of his own to at